Judge, Jury and Featured Dancer

Strip Club Petitions High Court to Hear Tax Case

By Jacob Gershman/Wall Street Journal

With the help of a leading First Amendment litigator, an upstate New York strip club is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it’s entitled to the same sales-tax exemptions granted to ballets and opera houses.

Albany-area strip club called Nite Moves is challenging the state’s sales-tax policy on constitutional grounds. It’s filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn a ruling by the state’s highest court last year.

The issue is whether the club’s cover charge and three-minute lap dances should be subject to an 8% sales tax. The club argues that the same tax code that exempts “dramatic or musical art performances,” should also apply to strip-club performances, accusing the state of acting as a dance critic.

State attorneys have argued that the nude dancers at Nite Moves aren’t “engaged in a genuine choreographic dance performance.” The New York Court of Appeals ruled against Nite Moves in a 4-to-3 decision in October.

Nite Moves CFO Stephen Dick told Law Blog that he realizes the odds are long on the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case at all. “But we believe our case has as much merit and is as important to free speech nationally as any other that we will be petitioning the court in the next session,” he said.

Well this is what happens when good men like Elliott Spitzer get run out of government.

What a bunch elitists they’ve got in the state government in New York. Sitting in their ivory towers and enjoying the “genuine choreographic dance” over at the ballet. I guess Joe Six Pack doesn’t deserve entertainment.

What’s more genuinely choreographed than some lass doing the batman on your face? I challenge these stuff shirts in Albany to check out the lunch buffet at Nite Moves and see if they don’t come away with a different point of view.

At least the Supreme Court can be counted on to make sure freedom of speech and artistic expression will be help up, unlike some g strings which will be pulled down. Clarence Thomas is probably wetting his lips right now. Anita Bryant never won glass heels.



Now that is some fine choreographic dance.