Reasoning of the Court

Reasoning of the Court
The reasoning of the court or of the majority came to their conclusions of why the Indiana statue should continue to stay in its place. Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Kennedy together came to the same opinions for the reasoning of their decisions. For Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justices O’Connor and Kennedy their reasoning for the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, deciding that previous litigation with respect to the statute in the Supreme Court of Indiana and this Court precluded the possibility of such a challenge, and remanded to the District Court in order for the plaintiffs to pursue their claim that the statute violated the First Amendment as applied to their dancing. Glen Theatre, Inc. v. Pearson, 802 F.2d 287, 288-290 (1986). On remand, the District Court concluded that [501 U.S. 560, 565] "the type of dancing these plaintiffs wish to perform is not expressive activity protected by the Constitution of the United States," and rendered judgment in favor of the defendants. http://ussupremecourtcases.us/USSC/Vol_1991/1991_Barnes_v_Glen_Theatre_Inc_501_US_560.htm p3 While Justices Scalia and Souter came up with concluding opinions of for themselves. Justice Scalia reasoning was in his view that the Indiana statue is not directed towards the establishments dancing he states. In my view, the challenged regulation must be upheld, not because it survives some lower level of First-Amendment scrutiny, but because, as a general law regulating conduct and not specifically directed at expression, it is not subject to First-Amendment scrutiny at all. Almost the entire domain of Indiana's statute is unrelated to expression, unless we view nude beaches topless hot dog vendors as speech." The intent to convey a "message of eroticism" (or any other message) is not a necessary element of the statutory offense of public indecency; nor does one commit that statutory offense by conveying the most explicit "message of eroticism," so long as he does not commit any of the four specified acts in the process. http://ussupremecourtcases.us/USSC/Vol_1991/1991_Barnes_v_Glen_Theatre_Inc_501_US_560.htm p8 As for Justice Souter his conclusion was also different his opinion for the statue was that not all dancing is protected by expression in the first amendment. He states, This Court has previously categorized ballroom dancing as beyond the Amendment's protection, Dallas v. Stanglin, 490 U.S. 19, 24 -25 (1989), and dancing as aerobic exercise would likewise be outside the First Amendment's concern. But dancing as a performance directed to an actual or hypothetical audience gives expression at least to generalized emotion or feeling, and where the dancer is nude or nearly so, the feeling expressed, in the absence of some contrary clue, is eroticism, carrying an endorsement of erotic experience. Such is the expressive content of the dances described in the record. Although such performance dancing is inherently expressive, nudity per se is not. http://ussupremecourtcases.us/USSC/Vol_1991/1991_Barnes_v_Glen_Theatre_Inc_501_US_560.htm p13.