Life might have imitated art in this sleepy town that doesn’t take kindly to dirty dancing.
According to this Fourth Circuit opinion, “Willis danced in a sexually provocative manner — gyrating and simulating sexual intercourse with her partner while ‘hunch[ed]‘ on the floor…. Willis wore very short skirts and would frequently bend over while dancing, exposing her underwear, her buttocks, and her ‘privates.’” Her dancing was so provocative that the town’s powers-that-be asked her to tone it down. It didn’t work.
So the town banished her from its dance hall.
A lawsuit followed, and the district court denied Willis any relief. The Fourth Circuit affirmed for the most part, determining that Willis’s dances were not protected under the First Amendment (relying principally on Dallas v. Stanglin, 490 U.S. 19 (1989) and its progeny). The court did note that “musical performances like those at the Depot are clearly a form of speech entitled to First Amendment protection.” It also recognized that where a protected right of speech exists, “there is likewise a protected right to receive the speech.” But it found Willis’s alleged right to listen to music at the Depot too attenuated to bring the First Amendment into play.
What did interest the court was Willis’s equal protection claim. It seems that community members testified that “Willis and a dance partner ‘would hunch on the floor, simulating sexual intercourse.’ The Town, however, banned only Willis; no action was taken against her unnamed partner.” The conclusion: “Willis’s allegations of arbitrary singling-out by the Town are sufficient to support an Olech ‘class of one’ claim.”
A little less “Footloose,” and a little more “One.”
Cary Wiggins on the Web