FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
September 16, 2008
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
DOCTOR JOHN’S, a Utah
corporation; JOHN HALTOM,
Plaintiffs-Counter-Defendants -
Appellants,
v. No. 07-4131
G. BLAKE WAHLEN, in his official
capacity as City Manager; TAMMY
NELSON, in her official capacity as
Development Services Manager,
Defendants - Appellees.
ROY CITY,
Defendant-Counter-Claimant -
Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF UTAH
(D.C. No. 1:03-CV-81-PGC)
W. Andrew McCullough of McCullough & Associates, L.L.C., Midvale, Utah, for
Plaintiffs - Appellants.
Robert Keller (Jody K. Burnett of Williams & Hunt, on the brief) Salt Lake City,
Utah, for Defendants - Appellees.
Before KELLY, McCONNELL, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.
KELLY, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiff-Appellant Doctor John’s, Inc. appeals the grant of summary
judgment in favor of the Defendant-Appellee City of Roy (“City”) on its claim
that the City’s ordinance regulating sexually oriented businesses violates the First
Amendment. The district court previously granted summary judgment to the City
on all grounds, but we remanded for the district court to clarify what evidence it
considered under the burden-shifting scheme of City of Los Angeles v. Alameda
Books, Inc., 535 U.S. 425 (2002) (plurality). See Doctor John’s, Inc. v. City of
Roy, 465 F.3d 1150, 1169 (10th Cir. 2006) (Doctor John’s II). On remand, the
district court concluded that Doctor John’s evidence was insufficient to meet its
burden at Alameda Books Step 2 and granted summary judgment again to the
City. Doctor John’s, Inc. v. City of Roy, No. 03-081, 2007 WL 1302757, *12 (D.
Utah May 2, 2007) (Doctor John’s III) (unpublished). Our jurisdiction arises
under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.
Background
Doctor John’s operates stores that sell, among other things, a range of
“adult” products. Plaintiff-Appellant John Haltom is a major shareholder in
Doctor John’s parent company and is involved in the operation of Doctor John’s
Roy City store. Soon after Doctor John’s came to town, the City of Roy passed
an ordinance requiring all “sexually oriented businesses” and their employees to
follow various regulations to prevent the deleterious effects of those businesses.
The ordinance sets forth findings supporting the need for the regulations based on
case law, Congressional testimony, research papers, and various studies from
other cities. Aplt. App. at 21–25. The details of the ordinance are not
particularly relevant to this appeal, but briefly, the ordinance requires that these
businesses and their employees obtain licenses, that they pay an application and
annual renewal fees, and that they limit their operating hours to 10:00 am to
11:00 pm. Once an application is filed, a temporary license is immediately
issued, and a permanent license will follow except under certain circumstances
including, for example, when an employee has convictions for specified crimes,
the business has refused inspection of the premises within the last year, or the
business has provided incomplete or false information.
Doctor John’s refused to submit an application and filed a lawsuit pursuant
to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging the ordinance was an unconstitutional restriction on
speech. The City counterclaimed seeking a court order requiring Doctor John’s to
comply with the ordinance. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district
court granted summary judgment to the City on all federal claims and declined to
exercise jurisdiction over the state law claims. Doctor John’s, Inc. v. City of
Roy, 333 F. Supp. 2d 1168 (D. Utah 2004) (Doctor John’s I). On appeal, we
affirmed summary judgment for the City on all claims except the First
Amendment claim, remanding because we were uncertain whether the district
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court considered articles Doctor John’s submitted in its district court pleadings to
cast doubt on the City’s rationale as required by Alameda Books Step 2. Doctor
John’s II, 465 F.3d at 1169. We remanded reasoning that because the parties’
evidence is essential to determining whether an ordinance is narrowly tailored to
serve a municipality’s interest in preventing secondary effects, it was necessary to
allow the district court to thoroughly review Doctor John’s evidence since the
evidence was not mentioned in the district court’s order. Id.
On remand, the district court first considered whether Doctor John’s failure
to disclose the articles as discoverable information or supplement previous
disclosures was harmless under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a). Doctor John’s III, 2007
WL 1302757, at *4. The district court concluded the untimeliness was not
harmless and the materials were inadmissible as a sanction under Rule 37(c)(1).
Id. Then the district court proceeded to analyze whether the articles cast doubt on
the City’s rationale for its ordinance, assuming the articles were admissible. The
district court noted that despite its briefing order requesting the parties to explain
how their studies supported or cast doubt on the ordinance, Doctor John’s only
responded to the City’s Rule 26 and hearsay arguments and argued issues
foreclosed by Doctor John’s II. 2007 WL 1302757, at *5. Despite this failure,
the district court still reviewed arguments in Doctor John’s initial summary
judgment pleadings from 2004 and concluded that the materials Doctor John’s
submitted had failed to cast doubt on the ordinance’s rationale. Id.
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Discussion
Ordinances targeting the secondary effects of adult businesses are analyzed
as time, place, and manner regulations. City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc.,
475 U.S. 41, 46 (1986). These ordinances will be upheld if they are “justified
without reference to the content of the regulated speech,” id. at 48, narrowly
tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and leave open reasonable
alternative avenues of communication. Z.J. Gifts D-2, L.L.C. v. City of Aurora,
136 F.3d 683, 688 (10th Cir. 1998). In Doctor John’s II, we previously
determined that the ordinance is justified without reference to the content of the
regulated speech and noted that Doctor John’s did not argue that the ordinance
fails to leave open alternative avenues of communication. 465 F.3d at 1164.
Thus, the only issue left to consider is whether there is any issue of material fact
precluding summary judgment with regard to whether the ordinance is narrowly
tailored to serve a significant government interest. We review this issue de novo.
Rost ex rel. K.C. v. Steamboat Springs RE-2 Sch. Dist., 511 F.3d 1114, 1118
(10th Cir. 2008).
The City bears the burden of providing evidence of secondary effects to
justify its ordinance. Alameda Books, 535 U.S. at 437 (plurality). A
municipality may rely on any evidence that is “reasonably believed to be relevant
to the problem that the city addresses.” Renton, 475 U.S. at 51–52. “This is not
to say that a municipality can get away with shoddy data or reasoning. The
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municipality’s evidence must fairly support the municipality’s rationale for its
ordinance.” Alameda Books, 535 U.S. at 438. The burden then shifts to the
plaintiff to “cast direct doubt on this rationale, either by demonstrating that the
municipality’s evidence does not support its rationale or by furnishing evidence
that disputes the municipality’s factual findings.” Id. at 438–39. If the plaintiff
succeeds in casting doubt on the municipality’s rationale, “the burden shifts back
to the municipality to supplement the record with evidence renewing support for a
theory that justifies its ordinance.” Id. at 439.
In Doctor John’s II, we held that the City had satisfied its burden under
Step 1 of Alameda Books, rejecting Doctor John’s contention that the ordinance is
not narrowly tailored because it lacks specific evidence concerning off-site adult
businesses. 465 F.3d at 1166–68. We reasoned that a municipality need not
initially produce specific evidence regarding the precise type of business, but a
plaintiff may challenge a municipality’s rationale by producing “evidence that its
type of adult business (e.g., ‘off-site’) is relevantly different than those types of
businesses analyzed in the studies supporting the ordinance (e.g., ‘on-site’).” Id.
at 1168. Because Doctor John’s had produced no evidence regarding off-site
adult businesses, that argument failed to cast doubt on the City’s rationale. Id.
We ultimately remanded because the record was not clear whether the district
court considered the articles Doctor John’s submitted to cast doubt on the City’s
rationale. Therefore, the only surviving issue on appeal is whether the evidence
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Doctor John’s submitted to the district court casts doubt on the City’s rationale
for its ordinance at Alameda Books Step 2.
I. Rule 26(a) violation and Rule 37 sanctions. The district court
concluded that Doctor John’s failure to disclose the articles as discoverable
information or supplement previous disclosures was not harmless under Fed. R.
Civ. P. 26(a) warranting sanctions under Rule 37(c)(1). Doctor John’s III, 2007
WL 1302757, at *4. We review a district court’s determination whether a Rule
26(a) violation is justified or harmless for abuse of discretion. Woodworker’s
Supply, Inc. v. Principal Mut. Life Ins. Co., 170 F.3d 985, 993 (10th Cir. 1999).
Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a) requires disclosure of the names of all individuals and
information that the party may use to support its claims or defenses, including
expert witnesses and their opinions. In addition, Rule 26(e) requires a party to
timely supplement all disclosures made under Rule 26(a). Under Fed. R. Civ. P.
37(c)(1), “[i]f a party fails to provide information or identify a witness as
required by Rule 26(a) or (e), the party is not allowed to use that information or
witness to supply evidence on a motion, . . . unless the failure was substantially
justified or is harmless.”
Doctor John’s attached the two articles in dispute to a reply memorandum
in support of its motion for summary judgment and in response to the City’s
motion for summary judgment filed July 20, 2004. The district court concluded
that the failure to disclose the articles prejudiced the City because it effectively
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had no opportunity to respond. Neither the court of appeals nor the district court
mentioned that the articles were attached to a dual-purpose pleading, Doctor
John’s reply memorandum in support of its motion for summary judgment and its
response to the City’s motion for summary judgment, Aplt. App. at 171. Doctor
John’s argues that the City waived its objection to strike its articles by not
objecting prior to remand when it had an opportunity to do so in its response to
Doctor John’s motion for summary judgment filed July 26, 2004.
Ordinarily, a litigant’s failure to specifically object to specific exhibits not
disclosed under Rule 26(a) may well waive that objection. But here, we
remanded specifically for the district court to conduct a thorough analysis of the
evidence and clarify which evidence it relied upon. We noted that the district
court may have refused to consider the evidence as untimely, Doctor John’s II,
465 F.3d at 1169, so it was proper on remand for the City to address that
possibility and object to the consideration of those articles. Clearly, the district
court rejected the alternative of reopening discovery (the City suggested it as an
alternative to striking), and opted instead to examine the evidence already
submitted by the parties. We cannot say that the district court abused its broad
discretion in its management of discovery and scheduling matters. See King v.
PA Consulting Group, Inc., 485 F.3d 577, 591 (10th Cir. 2007). Similarly, the
district court’s view that the articles were factual instead of legal, as Doctor
John’s contends, also was not an abuse of discretion given the nature of the
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secondary effects inquiry. Although we conclude that the district court did not
abuse its discretion in striking the articles, even if the articles were considered as
evidence under the Alameda Books framework, Doctor John’s has failed to cast
doubt on the City’s rationale that its ordinance is narrowly tailored to prevent the
secondary effects of adult businesses.
II. Whether Doctor John’s articles cast doubt. Doctor John’s may cast
direct doubt on the City’s rationale for its ordinance “either by demonstrating that
the municipality’s evidence does not support its rationale or by furnishing
evidence that disputes the municipality’s factual findings.” Alameda Books, 535
U.S. at 438–39. Doctor John’s submitted six exhibits to the district court as
evidence in support of its arguments: an unsworn affidavit of Bruce McLaughlin,
a book chapter, 1 two summaries of studies concluding adult businesses produce
secondary effects, 2 the Keetch article, 3 and the Linz article. 4 Even though Doctor
1
Eric D. Kelly & Connie Cooper, Everything You Always Wanted to
Know about Regulating Sex Businesses, Planning Advisory Serv. Report No.
495/496, American Planning Association, ch. 9 (Dec. 2000) (Aplt. App. at 115).
2
Louis F. Comus III, Summaries of Key Reports Concerning the Negative
Secondary Effects of Sexually Oriented Businesses (Aplt. App. at 180); Adult
Studies as Summarized by Louis Comus (Aplt. App. at 200).
3
Von G. Keetch & Matthew K. Richards, The Need For Legislation to
Enshrine Free Exercise in the Land Use Context, 32 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 725
(1999) (Aplt. App. at 206).
4
Bryant Paul, Daniel Linz, & Bradley J. Shafer, Government Regulation of
“Adult” Businesses through Zoning and Anti-Nudity Ordinances: Debunking the
Legal Myth of Negative Secondary Effects, 6 Comm. L. & Pol’y 355 (2001)
(Aplt. App. at 221).
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John’s appears to concede in its brief that only two of those exhibits are at issue
on appeal, see Aplt. Br. at 13–14 (“The exhibits at issue here were attached as
Exhibits” to a reply memorandum, referring to the Keetch and Linz articles.), we
will briefly address the first four exhibits as well.
First, the district court granted the City’s motion to strike Mr.
McLaughlin’s affidavit, Aplt. App. at 535, and Doctor John’s has not appealed
that decision. Second, the book chapter, mentioned but not discussed in Doctor
John’s brief on appeal, appears to be addressed to city planning officials
regulating adult businesses and states that these businesses produce negative
secondary effects. Id. at 120. Although the chapter does distinguish between on-
site and off-site sexually oriented businesses, it simply discusses broad regulatory
issues associated with each type and only summarily describes the secondary
effects of each type without providing any evidence supporting the distinction.
Id. at 120–23. Third, the two summaries by Mr. Comus are not mentioned in
Doctor John’s brief on appeal. The summaries simply list a number of studies
finding negative secondary effects from adult businesses and do not appear to
support Doctor John’s argument. See id. at 180.
Next, the Keetch article argues that “generally applicable” land use
regulations approved of by Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990),
allow municipalities to impinge on the free exercise of religion by zoning out
churches. See Keetch & Richards, supra, at 725–26. Doctor John’s argues that
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the premise of the article is that municipalities suppress the disfavored speech of
unpopular churches, like adult businesses, under the guise of regulating the
secondary effects they produce. The Keetch article fails to cast doubt on the
City’s rationale because it does not discuss the specific secondary effects
municipalities complain churches cause, but only argues that the land use
regulations are motivated by animus towards minority religions. Thus, the article
is irrelevant to an analysis of secondary effects.
Doctor John’s closest evidence is the Linz article. At first glance, the
article does appear to cast doubt on secondary effects studies generally in stating
that its authors reviewed 107 relevant studies. However, the article only analyzes
the 10 most frequently cited studies by municipalities, and the City of Roy only
relies on 4 of those 10 studies. Consequently, it is difficult to see how the article
casts doubt on the other 14 studies relied on by the City, let alone the other 7
reports and the many cases cited by the ordinance. Aplt. App. at 22.
The article’s main premise is also problematic because it argues that
secondary effects studies relied on by municipalities should meet the
requirements of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
However, the Supreme Court has “flatly rejected [the] idea” of requiring cities to
rely on empirical analysis. City of Erie v. Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. 277, 300 (2000)
(citing Nixon v. Shrink Mo. Gov’t PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 394 (2000)). In fact,
among the specific empirical studies that the Supreme Court rejected in City of
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Erie, were Dr. Linz’s studies cited by an amicus curiae, Brief for The First
Amendment Lawyers Association as Amicus Curiae Supporting Respondent, City
of Erie v. Pap’s A.M., 529 U.S. 277 (2000) (No. 98-1161), 1999 WL 805047, and
relied on by the dissent, Erie, 529 U.S. at 315 n.3 (Souter, J., concurring in part
and dissenting in part). See id. at 300. This amicus brief principally relies on,
and attaches in its appendix, a paper by Dr. Linz which appears to be merely an
earlier draft of the article later published in 2001 and submitted to the district
court. The paper analyzes the same ten secondary effects studies, contains
strikingly similar tabular data, and utilizes the same methodology, i.e., analysis
under the Daubert standards, as the article later published in Communication Law
and Policy in 2001. See Amicus Curiae Brief, Erie, 529 U.S. 277 (No. 98-1161),
1999 WL 805047, app. at A.1.
Even Doctor John’s concedes that “courts continue to rule that studies of
secondary effects . . . do not have to meet the standard of Daubert.” Aplt. Br. at
24. For this reason, Doctor John’s cites “judicial authority in which other courts
ha[ve] found these same studies” cast doubt on the studies relied on by the City.
Id. However, in light of the Supreme Court’s rejection of this specific analysis by
Dr. Linz, we see little need to continue. Nevertheless, the cases cited by Doctor
John’s are distinguishable because none relied solely on the Linz article to cast
doubt on a municipality’s rationale for an ordinance. For example, in DiMa Corp.
v. High Forest Township, No. 02-3800, 2003 WL 21909571 (D. Minn. Aug. 7,
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2003), a plaintiff cast doubt on a township’s rationale by submitting an expert
report and three studies directly addressing adult businesses offering only off-site
materials in addition to submitting the Linz article. Id. at *3. The township only
relied on five secondary effects studies, four of which the Linz article directly
analyzed. Id.
Doctor John’s also relies on Abilene Retail No. 30, Inc. v. Board of
Commissioners of Dickson County, Kansas, 492 F.3d 1164 (10th Cir. 2007),
where the plaintiff submitted five studies showing sexually oriented businesses do
not cause negative secondary effects, called Dr. Linz as an expert who reviewed
every study relied on by the municipality, and submitted an article by Dr. Linz
and others challenging the validity of various studies. Id. at 1187 (Ebel, J.,
concurring). 5 It is not clear from the opinion whether this article by Dr. Linz is
the same one that Doctor John’s submitted to the district court, but even if it was,
the plaintiff in Abilene Retail relied on substantially more than just the Linz
article to cast doubt on the county’s rationale. Similarly, the only other courts to
conclude that the Linz article was sufficient to cast doubt on a city’s rationale did
so when the article was submitted with other evidence, such as expert affidavits,
that specifically contradicted nearly all of the evidence supporting the ordinances.
5
In Abilene, the panel produced two opinions for the court, both receiving
three votes. One opinion held that the County failed to carry its burden at
Alameda Books Step 1; the other held that the County failed carry its burden at
Alameda Books Step 3. 465 F.3d at 1175–76, 1181.
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See 22nd Ave. Station, Inc. v. City of Minneapolis, 429 F. Supp. 2d 1144,
1150–51 (D. Minn. 2006); Giovani Carandola, Ltd. v. Fox, 396 F. Supp. 2d 630,
641–47 (M.D.N.C. 2005), rev’d in part, 470 F.3d 1074 (4th Cir. 2006). Other
courts have rejected Dr. Linz’s argument, even when submitted with additional
evidence, as insufficient to cast doubt on a city’s rationale for its ordinance. See
G.M. Enterprises v. Town of St. Joseph, 350 F.3d 631, 635–36, 640 (7th Cir.
2003); SOB, Inc. v. County of Benton, 317 F.3d 856, 863 (8th Cir. 2003);
Fantasyland Video, Inc. v. County of San Diego, 373 F. Supp. 2d 1094, 1108–10
(S.D. Cal. 2005), aff’d, 505 F.3d 996 (9th Cir. 2007); Nite Moves Entm’t, Inc. v.
City of Boise, 153 F. Supp. 2d 1198, 1208–09 (D. Idaho 2001). These courts
rejected Dr. Linz’s approach because of its reliance on Daubert and because
requiring municipalities to present empirical data to support an ordinance “would
go too far in undermining our settled position that municipalities must be given a
reasonable opportunity to experiment with solutions to address the secondary
effects of protected speech.” Alameda Books, 535 U.S. at 439 (quotations
omitted).
Doctor John’s also cites a number of cases relying on Encore Videos, Inc.
v. City of San Antonio, 330 F.3d 288 (5th Cir. 2003), arguing that its business
only sells merchandise to be used off-site. See Aplt. Br. at 31. However, the
Tenth Circuit has explicitly rejected the reasoning of Encore Videos that the on-
site/off-site distinction is relevant at Step 1 of Alameda Books. Doctor John’s II,
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465 F.3d at 1167–68; see Z.J. Gifts, 136 F.3d at 687–88. We acknowledge that
the distinction between on-site and off-site adult businesses may be relevant
under Step 2 of Alameda Books. Doctor John’s II, 465 F.3d at 1168. But Doctor
John’s has produced absolutely no evidence relevant to this distinction. See id.;
see also Abilene Retail, 492 F.3d at 1186 n.7 (Ebel, J., concurring). Finally, the
Linz article is insufficient because it does not address many of the stated
objectives the ordinance is intended to accomplish, for example, the prevention of
distribution of harmful materials to minors. Aplt. App. at 24, ¶ 21. Prior to the
enactment of the ordinance, the City’s police chief investigated a similar business
in another Utah municipality. Aplt. App. at 481. This reinforced concerns about
the distribution of harmful, sexually-oriented material to minors, notwithstanding
a policy against admitting minors. Such evidence provides strong support for the
ordinance and stands unchallenged. 6 Aplt. App. at 481-83; see also id. at 486-87
(parental complaints about videos sold to minors).
We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in striking
the Keetch and Linz articles as a sanction under Rule 37(c)(1) for violation of
Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a). We also conclude that, even if considered, Doctor John’s
has failed to produce evidence sufficient to cast doubt on the evidence supporting
6
The past criminal history of the store manager also provides strong
support for the ordinance. See Doctor John’s, 465 F.3d at 1170, n.27, 1171
(discussing propensity for recidivism); State v. Haltom, No. 20070498-CA, 2008
WL 207861, at *1 (Utah. Ct. App. Jan. 25, 2008) (per curiam).
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the City’s rationale that its ordinance is narrowly tailored to serve a significant
government interest.
AFFIRMED.
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