Testing Supreme Court assumptions in California v. la Rue: Is there justification for prohibiting sexually explicit messages in establishments that sell liquor?

The United States Supreme Court has upheld the idea that a state may prohibit thecommunication of sexually explicit messages and adult entertainment in establishments licensedto sell liquor. State liquor control boards across the country rely on this decision and its progenyin order to regulate alcohol serving businesses that feature adult entertainment. These boardshave accepted the here-to-fore untested premise that combining liquor service with adultentertainment leads to greater adverse secondary effects than merely serving liquor alone. Inorder to test this assumption a study of prostitution, sexual assault and other sexual offenses inToledo, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio was undertaken utilizing crime event dataprovided by the police. The results revealed that adult businesses were not the primary source ofsex crime events and in some instances sex crime was inversely correlated with the presence ofthese businesses in a community. Most often these businesses showed zero sex crime events.Instead, alcohol serving, non-adult establishments are a significant source of such events. Theconsistency of the results of the present study with past research and the implications of thisstudy and past research for assumptions made about state regulations of sex-relatedcommunication are discussed.