Alabama beach town bans "vile and vulgar" t-shirts

[fire_of_avalon]

Kinda goes against the first amendment don't you think?

No.

Yeah, because who cares about Freedom of Speech and the rights of the business owner to sell whatever merchandise they want (that aren't illegal)?

They can still sell them.

I don't have a problem with people selling stupid tshirts but I also don't have a problem with a community deciding to make ordinances since that's pretty much what local government is for.

Who are you and what did you do with the foa that has a decent grasp of constitutional law?

We occupy the same body, at the moment. I missed you, too!

The First Amendment applies to local ordinances as well, through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. You're right that businesses can still sell the shirts, but it's a legislative act that determines what content can and cannot be displayed and sold to minors.

Duh.

That's clearly unconstitutional based on Brown v. EMA, which relatively recently struck down a California law that banned the sale of violent video games to minors. That decision also cited older SCOTUS cases that struck down laws that, among others, tried to regulate the display of any nudity in drive-in theaters that could potentially be seen by minors driving by.

Yes, but the opinion in Brown v. EMA advises 1) video games are protected speech because they fall under the protections due to media and 2) also encourages as the industry grows the decision be reexamined.

Unless it fits into an obscenity exception, state and local governments do not have the power to regulate the exchange of speech solely based on the content of the message (which it is doing here).

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.^[2] It has three parts:

• Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.^[3]

Not saying all or any of the tshirts qualify, but they might. Also saying you're wrong - the community DOES have the right to regulate speech based solely on the message if the three prongs of the Miller test are satisfied.

I'm sure you're aware of this case, but for the edification of others I'll also cite Cohen v. California.

Big difference between a political dissent and a tshirt that advocates fellatio or something. Different types of speech aren't protected equivocally. You know that.

I want to make it clear that I don't agree with this stupidity. Because pull your panties out of a wad, no one gives a trout what your tshirt says. What I am saying is that the current reading of First Amendment doesn't necessarily protect this type of speech.

Nothing on any of these T-shirts, or really on any T-shirt period, could ever qualify as "fighting words".

I dunno about that. If someone wore a t-shirt that said "Kill all niggers" I'm pretty sure that would qualify as fighting words.

Fighting words generally applies to speech directly targeted at specific people. I suppose it could be argued that wearing such a shirt to a NAACP rally would qualify, but the fighting words doctrine has been applied less and less over the years. It's a stupid and vague exception anyway (albeit not as stupid and vague as obscenity), and deserves to be on the shelf.

Yeah, I agree all of the doctrines regulating non-political speech are vague and stupid and need to be addressed. Get your ass to work on that, young man.