Strip Clubs Get Free Speech Boost in Georgia Tax Fight at SCOTUS

The US Supreme Court should use a dispute over a Georgia tax on strip clubs to clarify its First Amendment jurisprudence on what makes a law content-based versus content-neutral, groups backing opponents of the tax told the justices Wednesday.

The amicus briefs support the Georgia Association of Club Executives, which asked the justices to overturn a 2024 Georgia Supreme Court ruling that the tax doesn’t violate the right to free speech.

The 1% special levy financing the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund is content-neutral because it furthers the important governmental interest of reducing sex trafficking, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled, applying the intermediate scrutiny test.

Competing precedent from the US Supreme Court has blurred the line between content-based speech regulation that’s subject to strict scrutiny and content-neutral regulation subject to intermediate scrutiny, 22 First Amendment scholars told the court.

“This confusion has the potential both to confound good faith attempts at regulation and to chill speech that should be protected by the First Amendment,” said the group, which includes the University of California, Berkeley’s Erwin Chemerinsky and UCLA’s Eugene Volokh.

A coalition of anti-abortion groups and law professors that support peaceful sidewalk outreach to prevent abortions filed a second amicus brief in the case Wednesday. The Supreme Court upheld buffer zone laws restricting such speech in 2000’s Hill v. Colorado, which the brief compared to the speech restrictions imposed by Georgia’s tax.

“At first blush, amici might seem to have little in common with Petitioner—a trade association for adult entertainment clubs in Georgia,” Secular Pro-Life, Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, and five law professors said. “But both find themselves in conflict with the same line of cases that undermines their First Amendment rights.”

Buffer zone laws, like restrictions on nude dancing, should be subject to strict scrutiny because they are both content-based restrictions on disfavored speech, the groups said.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the First Amendment Lawyers Association also filed an amicus brief in support of the clubs back in March. They argued that the tax is inappropriately content-based, inviting the government to play favorites with speech.

Georgia initially waived its right to respond to the petition. The court requested a response, signaling that at least one justice is interested in taking up the case. The state has until May 23 to file its brief.

Alexander Volokh of Emory University School of Law, Freed Grant LLC, and J. Thomas Morgan in Atlanta represent the clubs. Reich & Paolella LLP filed the brief for the professors. An attorney with Secular Pro-Life and Thomas Arthur of Emory University School of Law filed the brief for the anti-abortion groups.

The case is Ga. Ass’n of Club Execs., Inc. v. Georgia, U.S., No. 24-881, amicus briefs filed 4/23/25.