City News & Novelty, Inc. v. City of Waukesha

City News & Novelty v. Waukesha
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 28, 2000 Decided January 17, 2001
Full case name	City News & Novelty, Inc. v. City of Waukesha
Citations	531 U.S. 278 (more) 121 S. Ct. 743; 148 L. Ed. 2d 757
Case history
Prior	Denial affirmed, n°97-1502 (Wis. Ct. App. April 2, 1997); affirmed, 231 Wis.2d 93, 604 N.W.2d 870 (1999); certiorary granted, 530 U.S. 1242 (2000)
Holding
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as moot due to the store withdrawing its application.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinion
Majority	Ginsburg, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
First Amendment

City News & Novelty, Inc. v. Waukesha, 531 U.S. 278 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case decided in 2001. The case concerned the denial of a business license for an adult store which sold sexually explicit materials. The Court eventually dismissed the case as the store had withdrawn their application to renew their license.

In Freeman v. Maryland the United States Supreme Court announced procedural requirements necessary to guard against unconstitutional prior restraint.^[1] Under this regime, the state of Wisconsin set up an administrative review process for reconsidering denials of licenses for adult stores. City News & Novelty, Inc., requested a renewal to operate their business in the city of Waukesha. Their application was denied.

Wisconsin state courts upheld the denial^[2] and the store appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that they were not afforded proper judicial review of their matter before lower courts. The Supreme Court accepted the case to resolve a split amongst state and federal courts over how swift judicial review in these matters must be.^[3]

Jeff Scott Olson, the attorney for the store, called the Supreme Court appeal important. According to Olson, "prompt judicial review" is important because municipal decisions on license matters can sometimes happen for a "distaste" of the particular business.^[4]

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the decision for a unanimous court, dismissing the case. The basis for the dismissal was that City News had withdrawn its renewal application entirely.^[3] This meant that there was no "cognizable interest in the outcome" of the case. While expressing a desire to resolve the important question in this case regarding judicial review of state censorship, there was no way for the matter to survive when there was no live controversy.^[3][5]

• Free speech in the United States

• Text of City News & Novelty v. Waukesha, 531 U.S. 278 (2001) is available from: CourtListener Findlaw Justia Oyez (oral argument audio)