Texas Court Will Decide What Exactly Is A Nude Stripper

A Texas court is trying to decide what constituents a “nude” stripper in the state. We’d like to see the evidence in this case.

A lawsuit was filed this week in an Austin District Court by clubs that feel they are being unfairly charged the $5 entry fee that is mandatory for fully-nude strip club. These clubs say that their dancers perform in “paint, latex, wax, gel, foam, film and other various coatings.” These businesses say that they used to be exempt from the fee until 2015.

According to the lawsuit,

"The state’s comptroller of public accounts began enforcing tax fees for non-sexually oriented businesses based on liquor sales.”

There were many challenges to this change and in 2017 the comptroller modified the the fee to include any clubs that have dancers covered in latex and paint. These clubs, under the new rules, and categorized as a sexually oriented business. The clubs and their dancers are asking the judge to define what is a “fully nude” dancer and if they should be paying the entry fee. The plaintiffs, Texas Entertainment Association, are also seeking monetary damages. There are two other similar lawsuits that were filed against the state comptroller, Glenn Hegar, by MZ Entertainment and Texas LBC, Inc.