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2009 bills - Coates' Canons: NC Local Government Law Blog - http: / /sogweb.sog.unc.edu /blogs /localgovt - Yer Cheat'n Heart, Tattoos, the First Amendment, and Preemption Posted By Richard Ducker On September 28, 2010 @ 5:44 PM In General Local Government I loo. Comments I [1] "Where do you go in this town to get a tat, to find someone who can sling some ink? I wanna find somebody like they have on L.A. Ink that can do some real work on me. You know, a real artist. Might try one with my woman Marlene sitting on a fire- breathing dragon. Maybe in the ditch of my elbows..... Whaddya mean there is no tattooing allowed around here? Well, that sure sucks. Isn't this supposed to be a free country? That's the kind of thing that violates my rights." Well now, the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals I agree with you about one thing: a municipal ban on tattoo parlors can be an unconstitutional limitation of your rights and, by the way, also of the rights of the tattoo artist that you hope to find. Consider the situation of one such tattoo artist named Johnny Anderson, the co -owner of Yer Cheat'n Heart Tattoo in Gardena, California. Recently he has been repeatedly stymied in his bid to open a tattoo parlor in a building now housing a frozen yogurt store on a main street in the City of Hermosa Beach, a thriving southern California beach town in Los Angeles County. The Hermosa zoning ordinance, which allowed fortune tellers, adult businesses, and gun shops in several of its commercial zoning districts, did not, by implication, allow tattoo parlors, and city boards let die a proposal to add tattoo parlors to the list of permitted uses for certain districts. When sued, the city referred to various potential health hazards associated with tattoo parlors since many tattoo parlors in the area were never inspected. Los Angeles County's only tattoo parlor inspector acknowledged that some of the 850 tattoo artists working out of the 300 tattoo establishments in Los Angeles County were "unscrupulous or incompetent" and did not strictly follow proper sterilization processes. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the consistently liberal federal circuit that serves the ' Pa ' cific coastal states, held that both the display of tattoos and the art of tattooing itself were "fors of pure expression fully protected by the First Amendment." As a result, the Hermosa Beach prohibition of all tattoo parlors was unconstitutional on its face. The court held that tattooing and the display of tattoos were themselves forms of expressive activity and not conduct "imbued with elements of communication," which would be subject to less first Amendment protection. According to the 9th Circuit, "a form of speech does not lose First Amendment Page 330 http: / /sogweb.sog.une.edu/blogs /localgovt/ ?p= 3233(&print =l 12/6/2010