I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the city of Detroit in a case brought by the owners of a topless bar, concluding that zoning restrictions put in place by the city on adult establishments are unconstitutional. You can view the full ruling (PDF) here.
It’s a rather unusual case that began in 1998 when the state of Michigan began issuing a new type of license, a Topless Activity Permit (TAP), for adult establishments with liquor licenses. The original owners of a topless club then called “Legends” applied for and got a TAP for their business.
The city of Detroit then changed its zoning ordinances to prevent the opening of businesses with a TAP license within the “central business district” – i.e. downtown Detroit. But because this business was preexisting, it was “grandfathered” in under the old rules and allowed to continue to operate.
But in 2002, the original owners sold the business to a new owner. The state and the Detroit Police Department approved the sale and the transfer of all licenses to the new owner, but the Detroit City Council refused to even consider the issue, thus putting the business in legal jeopardy of being shut down by the city. For some reason, some on the Council insisted that the club could henceforth only present male adult entertainment, not female adult entertainment. This is referred to in the ruling as Condition 18.
The owners filed suit in 2003 and a court ruled that Condition 18 was invalid and issued an injunction preventing the city from enforcing that condition. Despite that ruling, the city council still refused to take up the application for a transfer of all licenses from the old owners to the new for nearly three years and then began issuing zoning violation notices ordering the company to cease and desist all activities.
Even though the Board of Zoning Appeals unanimously voted for the business and against the city in several appeals of those notices, the council continued to try and force the company out of business. The city council finally took a vote to deny a license to the new business in November 2006 and the company filed another lawsuit in federal court.
The district court made a rather odd ruling, declaring that the zoning ordinances were unconstitutional and ordering the city of Detroit to rewrite them but not issuing an injunction ordering them to grant the license to the plaintiffs. The appeals court upheld the lower court on the question of constitutionality but remanded the case back to the district court, ordering that court to issue an injunction on behalf of the plaintiffs so that they could continue to do business without the threat of further action by the city council.
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