In December 1999 Oasis Goodtime Emporium I, Inc. and four other nude dancing businesses filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of DeKalb County Ordinance § 4-104, which prohibits sexually explicit entertainment at an establishment that sells alcoholic beverages. Plaintiffs obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting enforcement of the ordinance, which for these establishments became effective on January 1, 2000.1 The trial court thereafter conducted a hearing on the TRO and on the interlocutory injunction plaintiffs sought pending resolution of their constitutional challenge. The trial court dissolved the TRO and denied the requested injunctive relief after finding that there was no substantial likelihood that plaintiffs would succeed in their challenge to the ordinance. Plaintiffs filed this direct appeal. See OCGA § 5-6-34 a 4 direct appeal from denial of interlocutory injunction. Finding no abuse in the trial court’s discretion in denying the injunctive relief, see Chambers v. Peach County, 268 Ga. 672 1 492 SE2d 191 1997, we affirm.
In the preamble to DeKalb County Ordinance § 4-104, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners stated that it took note “of the notorious and self-evident conditions attendant to the commercial exploitation of human sexuality, which do not vary greatly among generally comparable communities within our country” and based its observation both upon the experience of other urban counties and municipalities, which the Board found relevant to the problems faced by DeKalb County, and also upon a review of a report from the DeKalb County Police Department summarizing the criminal activity surrounding the nine existing license holders within the County that sold alcohol and provided sexually explicit entertainment. Based on this information, the Board found that public nudity, particularly when related to the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages, “begets criminal behavior and tends to create undesirable community conditions” such as depressed property values in the surrounding neighborhood, increased expenditure for the allocation of law enforcement personnel to preserve law and order, and an acceleration of community blight by the concentration of such establishments in particular areas. The Board further found that limitation of nude conduct in establishments licensed to sell alcohol for consumption on the premises “is in the public welfare and it is a matter of governmental interest and concern to prevent the occurrence of criminal behavior and undesirable community conditions normally associated with sexually explicit establishments.”
