## Facts

- The City of Littleton, Colorado enacted an ordinance requiring adult businesses to obtain an operating license and comply with zoning restrictions.
- The ordinance conditioned licensing on objective, nondiscretionary criteria unrelated to the content of materials sold or displayed.
- If the City denied a license, the applicant could seek review in Colorado state district court under ordinary Colorado civil-procedure rules.
- Z.J. Gifts D-4, L.L.C., operating an adult bookstore, opened at a site not zoned for adult businesses.
- Rather than applying for a license, Z.J. Gifts filed a facial First Amendment challenge in federal court, asserting the ordinance was an unconstitutional prior restraint because it did not guarantee a prompt final judicial decision after a denial.

## Issues

1. Whether the First Amendment requires an adult-business licensing scheme to assure a prompt judicial decision, not merely prompt access to judicial review.
2. Whether the Constitution requires a city’s licensing ordinance to include specific judicial-review safeguards (such as strict decision deadlines) to ensure promptness, as associated with prior-restraint doctrine.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Tenth Circuit and upheld the ordinance against the facial challenge.
- The Court held the First Amendment requires a prompt judicial determination when a license denial is challenged, not only access to court.
- The Court further held that Littleton was not required to write rigid, ordinance-specific judicial-decision deadlines into the licensing scheme.
- Ordinary Colorado judicial procedures were deemed sufficient to provide tools to prevent undue delay in adjudicating a denial.

## Legal Principles

- Prior-restraint doctrine in the adult-business licensing context requires a mechanism that can yield a prompt judicial decision on a challenged denial.
- When a licensing system applies objective, content-neutral criteria and does not involve content censorship, the First Amendment does not necessarily demand the special judicial-review structure associated with censorship regimes.
- A licensing ordinance need not itself codify strict court-decision time limits if state law provides ordinary procedures that courts can use to expedite review and avoid delay-related First Amendment harm.
- Claims that courts might not act promptly are generally evaluated case by case; speculative delay does not typically justify facial invalidation where procedures exist to seek timely adjudication.

## Conclusion

The Court held that adult-business licensing schemes must allow prompt judicial determinations of denial challenges, but municipalities may rely on ordinary state court processes to prevent undue delay and need not embed rigid judicial-decision deadlines in the ordinance to survive a facial First Amendment attack.


City of Littleton v. Z.J. Gifts D-4, L.L.C., 541 U.S. 774 (2004)