A settlement reached last month has put an end to a lawsuit filed in December 2005 by 18 strip clubs in Alabama, a representative with the state attorney general's office told the Mobile Register.
According to the Register’s report, the clubs agreed to drop the suit — which claimed Alabama's anti-nudity laws were unconstitutional — and authorities agreed that dancers would be in compliance with the law as long as they wore opaque cosmetic latex over their nipples, "T-back" thongs and flesh-colored latex, body paint, foundation or other opaque substances to cover the buttocks and the portions of the breast below the nipple.
Keith Miller, the state's chief deputy attorney general, told the Mobile Register that many clubs were already instituting the proper covering.
According to the report, Miller said the state sought the settlement after Birmingham-based U.S. District Judge Scott Coogler indicated he would declare the anti-nudity law unconstitutional.
"We were faced with a choice of having some regulation or having no regulation," Miller said. "There would have been no statute prohibiting totally nude dancing, and without that they could have done it, theoretically, wherever they wanted."
The state statute, passed in 1998, makes it illegal for any private club to show genitals, pubic areas, buttocks or female breasts for entertainment purposes. The law says those parts must be covered by an opaque substance, but club owners say the law is vague, because it does not specify what that substance should be.
The clubs’ lawsuit was spurred by an announcement from Alabama's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board that the agency would begin "selective enforcement" of the anti-nudity law, according to the lawsuit.
