L.A. adult shops downplay impact of zoning case.

They say state high court decision won't affect them

The owners of Star Strip, Plush Boutique and 20 other adult-entertainment businesses in the city of Los Angeles will continue their 4-year battle in federal court to keep from being zoned off their land or out of business, their attorney vowed last week, despite his law firm's Oct. 29 defeat before the state Supreme Court in a similar case.

The high court upheld another city's far more stringent zoning law to herd sexually oriented shops away from schools, parks and homes.

Attorney G. Randall Garrou said he is confident the high court came up with a "completely incorrect" ruling on federal constitutional law in City of National City v. Wiener and that federal judges reviewing his L.A. case would agree.

Nevertheless, if Garrou is wrong, and the National City decision becomes a precedent, L.A.'s sex-shop landscape would change drastically.

On its face, the high court decision raised the possibility that virtually every adult bookstore, cabaret or theater in L.A. would have to relocate to more remote parts of the city or shut down.

That would benefit some owners of neighbor businesses who have complained for years to police and the City Council of lewd acts and other alleged troubles generated by the shops. But it could create troubling questions for business owners if it's held that the city can legally refuse to grandfather shops that legally conformed with zoning rules at the time they opened.

Garrou, of the Beverly Hills law firm Weston, Sarno, Garrou & DeWitt, said his firm's adult-bookstore client in the National City case last week had not decided whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In that case, the high court ruled that a San Diego-area city called National City could ban adult businesses from operating within 1,500 feet of each other, within 1,500 feet of any school or public park or within 1,000 feet of residentially zoned property. L.A. and some 50 other cities filed court statements supporting National City.

In L.A., most adult businesses operate illegally. Many were established before 1978, when the first in a series of increasingly restrictive city zoning laws was passed by the City Council. These laws outlaw operations within 500 feet of residential land, churches or parks, or within 1,000 feet of each other, among other guidelines mandated by the City Council to reduce "blight" in surrounding neighborhoods.

L.A. Deputy City Attorney L. Wayne Mooney said the National City ruling bolsters his case against the L.A. adult businesses, which is pending in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But Mooney conceded that federal judges may not consider the ruling crucial to the appeal of an L.A. trial court's order. In June 1991 the trial court temporarily barred the city from enforcing its zoning laws, and essentially kicking the businesses off their property, until the case can be tried in court.

All L.A. plaintiffs, led by an adult bookstore called Topanga Press Inc., assert that the sexually explicit books, films, magazines and video tapes they sell and exhibit are protected under the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 2 of the California Constitution.

L.A. plaintiffs who operate adult cabarets, which feature live, erotic dance acts, also claim similar protection. They cite court decisions protecting nude dancing such as the 1992 opinion in International Eateries of America v. Broward County.

Importantly, the state Supreme Court upheld National City's zoning rules under the U.S. Constitution, and such state court opinions on federal law are not binding on the federal judges that will rule on the L.A. case, Garrou noted.

The L.A. case may be important to business owners who say they are tired of what L.A. city officials call "secondary effects" of sex shops.

"We're talking about solicitation of sexual acts that have occurred near at least two of these businesses, serious traffic congestion such as at Drake's (retail shop) on Melrose Avenue in 1988 and Le Sex Shoppe in Canoga Park in 1990, vulgar types of littering on property nearby ... and the need for extra police resources," said Deputy City Attorney Mooney.

An L.A. Police Department report on crime in the Hollywood area showed adult businesses may foster crime, according to the city's court filing. Between 1969 and 1975, during which adult businesses burgeoned in the Hollywood area from 11 to 88, Hollywood experienced "an overwhelming increase" in crime compared to the citywide rate, the city said.

The report was cited by City Council members to enact their first anti-porn zoning law in 1978. That and subsequent zoning laws already may have squeezed some adult shops out of business, plaintiff filings showed. Some 212 adult businesses existed in 1977, and that declined to 125 in 1984 and just 102 in 1988.

The adult shops claimed in their suit that in densely populated L.A., very little land is now both properly zoned and available to lease. Most of it lies next to refineries, in the Pacific Ocean, in manufacturing/warehousing districts or on other "unfeasible" sites like Dodger Stadium, said Garrou.

Mooney countered that "thousands" of acres are available and the adult-shop owners have never seriously sought to relocate.