## Facts

- SP Star Enterprises, Inc. operated an adult entertainment club featuring nude dancing in a converted warehouse in Los Angeles.
- Star sought a conditional use permit (CUP) to allow the sale and on-site consumption of alcoholic beverages at the club.
- A zoning administrator granted a one-year CUP.
- Nearby institutions and community stakeholders appealed to the Area Planning Commission (APC), asserting incompatibility with surrounding religious/community uses and redevelopment goals, and raising public-safety and nuisance concerns.
- After a public hearing, the APC granted the appeal and denied the CUP under municipal code provisions requiring findings that the use is desirable to public convenience or welfare and that alcohol sales will not adversely affect community welfare.
- Star petitioned for a writ of mandate to compel issuance of the CUP; the superior court denied relief.

## Issues

1. Whether denial of a CUP to sell alcohol at a nude-dancing establishment implicates First Amendment rights such that strict scrutiny or independent judicial review applies.
2. Whether the municipal code standards (“public convenience or welfare” and “welfare of the community”) are unconstitutionally vague or confer unbridled discretion enabling suppression of protected expression.
3. Whether substantial evidence supported the APC’s denial, or whether the stated reasons were a pretext for hostility toward nude dancing.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment denying the writ petition.
- The court held the dispute concerned the privilege to sell alcohol, not a fundamental or vested right, and did not trigger heightened First Amendment review.
- The court rejected the vagueness and unbridled-discretion challenge to the CUP standards as applied in this land-use/alcohol context.
- The court concluded the administrative record contained substantial evidence supporting the APC’s findings and no showing of pretext targeting protected expression.

## Legal Principles

- The ability to sell alcohol is not a fundamental, vested right; local regulation of alcohol service is reviewed under deferential administrative standards absent a fundamental vested right.
- When no fundamental vested right is at stake, judicial review of local land-use and permitting decisions generally asks whether the agency proceeded as required by law and whether substantial evidence supports its findings.
- Broad zoning standards tied to public convenience, welfare, and community impacts are not unconstitutional merely because they use general terms, so long as they are applied in context, supported by evidence, and subject to judicial review.
- A permitting decision affecting a venue that offers expressive conduct does not necessarily regulate speech when it leaves the expressive activity lawful and instead restricts ancillary conduct (such as alcohol service) based on land-use and public-welfare considerations.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the City’s denial of a conditional use permit for alcohol at an adult entertainment club because the decision regulated alcohol service rather than speech, the governing standards were not unconstitutionally standardless, and the denial was supported by substantial evidence of legitimate community-welfare concerns.


SP Star Enters., Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 173 Cal. App. 4th 459, 93 Cal. Rptr. 3d 152 (Ct. App. 2d Dist. 2009)