stating that a city could rationally impose an age and time restriction on dance halls, even if it had not imposed similar restrictions on other premises where teenagers and adults congregated together; arguments focusing on the inconsistency between the classification and the "interests and objectives" of the city "misapprehend[ed] the nature of rational-basis scrutiny"
How later courts described this case
- stating that a city could rationally impose an age and time restriction on dance halls, even if it had not imposed similar restrictions on other premises where teenagers and adults congregated together; arguments focusing on the inconsistency between the classification and the "interests and objectives" of the city "misapprehend[ed] the nature of rational-basis scrutiny"
- finding that the hundreds of teenagers who patronized a dance hall on a certain night did not have expressive associational rights because they were not members of an organization; they did not engage in the type of collective effort that typically supports associational rights; and most were just strangers who were willing to pay a fee for admission
- holding that ordinance restricting admission to certain dance halls to persons between the ages of 14 and 18 did not implicate the freedom of association partly because the patrons were not “members of any organized association” and “[m]ost [were] strangers to one another”
- holding that, where the First Amendment does not protect a certain activity, there can be no First Amendment right of association to engage in that activity
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Blackmun joins,
concurring in the judgment.
In my opinion the opportunity to make friends and enjoy the company of other people — in a dance hall or elsewhere— is an aspect of liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. For that reason, I believe the critical issue in this case involves substantive due process rather than the First Amendment right of association. Nonetheless, I agree with the Court that the city has adequately justified the ordinance’s modest impairment of the liberty of teenagers. Indeed, I suspect that the ordinance actually gives teenagers *29 greater opportunity to associate than they would have if the Class E dance-hall provision were invalidated. * I therefore join the Court’s judgment.
I do not join the Court’s assessment of this case under the Equal Protection Clause. Although the equal protection issue received nominal attention in the trial court, see Pet. for Cert. C-l to C-7, it was neither reviewed by the Texas Court of Appeals nor briefed before us. See 744 S. W. 2d 165 (1987); Pet. for Cert. 3; Brief for Petitioners 4.