Georgia\u2019s 1% tax on strip clubs to raise funds to combat child sex trafficking unfairly punishes businesses with no connection to the sexual exploitation of children, a lawyer for the clubs said Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But a lawyer for the state told the Georgia Supreme Court studies have shown strip clubs are frequented by child sex traffickers to lure customers, and taxing them is less harmful to those businesses than banning them altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The General Assembly passed the Safe Harbor Act, also known as Rachel\u2019s Law, in 2015 to create a source of tax revenue to support rehabilitative care and other social services for sexually exploited children. The following year, Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum adding the act to the state Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Georgia Association of Club Executives (GACE) challenged the law in a lawsuit filed in 2017. Last year, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell declared it unconstitutional because a section of the law that applied the tax to businesses that charge customers to view \u201cpersons exhibiting or modeling lingerie\u201d was vague and could resort in arbitrary enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday, Alexander Volokh, a lawyer representing GACE, argued the tax unfairly targets strip clubs to raise money to combat criminal activity for which they are not responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re being blamed and penalized for a problem they\u2019re not involved in and don\u2019t contribute to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Georgia Deputy Solicitor General Ross Bergethon said members of the General Assembly, in passing the law, relied on studies showing that both adult and child prostitution often occur inside strip clubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Courts have routinely upheld the right of governments to ban clubs that combine nude dancing with the sale of alcohol from their jurisdictions, Bergethon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no reason to treat this minimal tax on the same combination any differently,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Volokh cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings that nude dancing is a constitutionally protected form of expression under the First Amendment\u2019s right to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To get around that, the state would have to demonstrate the tax is necessary to combat child sex trafficking and that those funds could not be obtained through any other means, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe legislature could just have easily appropriated money from the general fund and be just as effective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Georgia Chief Justice David Nahmias told Volokh the case doesn\u2019t just involve nude dancing because the clubs are engaged in a combination of nude dancing and the commercial sale of alcohol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a direct limitation on speech,\u201d Nahmias said. \u201cThere\u2019s a limitation on speech associated with the consumption of alcohol in a commercial setting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nahmias also questioned Bergethon\u2019s reliance on studies linking strip clubs to child sex trafficking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlmost all of the studies showed no connection between the clubs, prostitution, violence and child sex exploitation,\u201d the chief justice said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court is expected to rule on the case later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Georgia\u2019s 1% tax on strip clubs to raise funds to combat child sex trafficking unfairly punishes businesses with no connection to the sexual exploitation of children, a lawyer for the clubs said Wednesday. But a lawyer for the state told the Georgia Supreme Court studies have shown strip clubs are frequented by child sex traffickers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8782,8474],"class_list":["post-28266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-georgia","tag-sun","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}