She's flat out wrong. The only justification for special taxes is to pay for administrative costs. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that First Amendment businesses can't be singled out for special taxes.
I think the people in Business License need to get better guidance before they run into significant constitutional problems. We would be happy to represent the Little Theatre.
It does cause some concern. It raises questions that need to be looked at.
You just don't have criminal trials dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct, intentional or unintentional.
To say, 'don't have it', that's censorship. That's what is being done. That is what is being said by the control board letter and by the sheriff.
When you have a set of rules, and then government says they don't apply to you -- they only apply when we want them to -- that's a concern.
Proper review is not particularly burdensome, so there is no real need for this. It's like they're saying we don't need judges, we don't want any review at all.
This is a substantial amount of money. This is not some symbolic type of gesture, this is the procedure to be followed.
Absolutely. That's perfectly within the realm of what should be done.
It really doesn't matter whether there has been an attempt at an outright ban or merely an attempt to influence these properties. We're still talking about action that is taken under the color of the law and is therefore governmental action that is, frankly, censorship.
It's not the job of police to play formal or informal censor.
If there is indeed a paucity of these kinds of cases in the Ninth Circuit, this could be used as a precedent.
I look at it as part of the same kind of mind-set that looks at the tourist industry as paramount, and therefore anything that might offend tourists, the powers that be don't want. So they pass these things sometimes forgetting the fact we're not in a private Disneyland here.
Certainly there is nothing that prohibits the commission or the (Gaming) Control Board from saying to properties, you have to be careful about and responsible for the security of any type of venue. But it can't go to content.
The discrimination was aimed at John McDonald. Domino's itself viewed JWM as John McDonald.