The Reverse Mount Laurel Doctrine

The always-interesting Ken Stahl highlights a recent land use case out of New Jersey.  In Sayreville v. 35 Club, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the first amendment does not necessarily require a  municipality to allow the sitting of adult businesses, so long as adult ventures have adequate access to locations elsewhere in the metro region (even if those locations are across state borders).

Stahl dubs this "the bizarro Mount Laurel Doctrine" and argues that it has the potential to create new red light disctricts. He writes, "Those communities that have permitted land uses deemed undesirable by other communities, perhaps out of a willingness to absorb their fair share, will be branded as red-light districts or ghettos and become dumping grounds for undesirable uses, while those that have guarded their exclusiveness most zealously will get to continue doing so for no better reason than that they always have."

Steve Clowney