My Commissioners are going to discuss regulating SOB's under Chapter 243 of the LGC. I would appreciate anyone and everyone's thoughts and comments, specifically regarding why your county has or has not adopted regulations, and any problems you have run into. Thanks.

I'm sure you can check with a number of different counties as to what they have done to address the problem and I would encourage you to do that to obtain a copy of their ordinances. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one of the SOB ordinances is posted on this website in the files section.

Just some general guidelines from my recollection of events when my former county (San Jacinto) passed an ordinance:

1. At some point the ordinance will get challenged. There's just too much money to be made in the SOB business not to take a shot at invalidating an ordinance to obtain a prime business location. That being the case, when the commissioners consider the ordinance make sure you build a record in commissioner's court and bring in evidence to show the negative effects of an SOB (prostitution, crime, dwi, etc...). There are tons of studies out there on that very subject. Furthermore, if you have a vice section of the County Sheriff's Department or local municipal police force, they can make great witnesses for building a record.

2. Once the fact that such an ordinance is under consideration, move as quickly as possible to implement it and put it in place. There will be a small "gold rush" to set up these businesses prior to regulation. There is some authority out there suggesting that if a business owner has obtained a location and begun the licensing process with the TABC or other administrative agencies, that the business owner may be "grandfathered" in and may not be subject to location restrictions the county passes.

3. One of the most important restrictions in an SOB ordinance is a location restriction (i.e. how many feet does the business need to be from residential areas, schools, churches, and so on). When drafting your ordinance, make sure that the location restrictions chosen by your county leave several viable locations in the county where such a business could locate.

If you want a copy of another ordinance to look at, email my former boss (he loves it when I do this) Scott Rosekrans at sjccda@txucom.net.

To answer your question, San Jacinto County is a small county (22,000 or so). Once it passed the ordinance, the County got sued by a lady claiming that it was passed illegally, deprived her of property without compensation, abridged her first amendment rights, and whatever else you can think of. After two years of litigation (through both state and federal courts) she finally gave up.

Hope this helps.

Robert DuBoise
rduboise@sbcglobal.net
Assistant District Attorney
Parker County, Texas

[This message was edited by Robert S. DuBoise on 05-21-02 at .]

In regulating this area you should review the following recent cases:
City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, Inc., No. 00-799, United States Supreme Court, Decided May 13, 2002;
Essence, Inc. v. City of Federal Heights, Nos. 001271 and 001286, United States Court of Appeals (10th), Decided April 8, 2002;
Lleh, Inc. v. Wichita County, Texas, No 00-11220, United States Court of Appeals (5th), Decided April 22, 2002;
Millennium Restaurants Group v. City of Dallas, Texas, 181 F. Supp. 2d 659 (2001)

Robert's ideas are good. If you have existing businesses keep in mind that Dallas has been fighting Millennium for I believe more than 10 years. You will note from the cases cited that the environment for this regulation is good in both the 5th Circuit and U. S. Supreme Court.

Robert is right about justifying the ordinance with appropriate studies and factual examples of local problems: arrests and prosecutions for obscenity, prostitution, etc., and they should be recited in the "Whereas's" section. Also, in one obscenity trial, a defense attorney attemnpted to use the definitions in the ordinance to try to convince the jury that the ordinance actually authorized the illegal conduct. We revised the ordinance to indicate that the definitions did not include that conduct that was in violation of the Penal Code.