Acorn Investments Inc. v. City of Seattle - United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Acorn Investments Inc. v. City of Seattle

By United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

  • Release Date: 1989-06-05
  • Genre: Law

Description

William A. Norris, Circuit Judge, Acorn Investments, Inc. owns and operates panoram machines at four adult entertainment centers in the City of Seattle. When a customer inserts one or more quarters into a panoram, the machine exhibits a video tape or motion picture on a screen for a few minutes.1 A customer may also view live entertainment through a panoram. Each panoram is located in a booth that gives individual patrons some degree of privacy. In this action, Acorn attacks as violative of the First Amendment city laws that require panoram businesses to pay various license fees and to disclose the names and addresses of shareholders. The district court awarded the City summary judgment on the shareholder disclosure issue and, after a one-day bench trial, ruled in favor of the City on the license fee issue. We reverse on both issues.