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Excerpt from www.nbcmiami.com
After Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed a bill that will prevent strippers under age 21 from performing in adult-entertainment establishments across Florida, a federal appeals court is preparing to take up a constitutional challenge to a similar restriction passed in Jacksonville.
A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments June 6 in Jacksonville about whether a city ordinance barring dancers under 21 in adult establishments violates First Amendment rights.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Corrigan last year upheld the age restriction, which the city contends is designed to prevent human trafficking. Backers of the bill that DeSantis signed last week also have said it is aimed at curbing trafficking.
But attorneys for club owners and dancers who challenged the Jacksonville ordinance wrote in an appeals-court brief last year that the “record shows that there had never been an arrest for human trafficking at an adult club in Jacksonville.”
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