Billups v. City of Charleston
| Decision Date | 03 August 2018 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 2:16-cv-00264-DCN |
| Parties | Kimberly BILLUPS, Michael Warfield, and Michael Nolan, Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina |
Arif Panju, Pro Hac Vice, Institute for Justice, Austin, TX, Robert Everett Johnson, Pro Hac Vice, Robert James McNamara, Pro Hac Vice, Institute for Justice, Arlington, VA, Sean A. O'Connor, Finkel Law Firm, Charleston, SC, for Plaintiffs.
Brian Quisenberry, Carol B. Ervin, Stephanie N. Ramia, Young Clement Rivers, Charleston, SC, for Defendant.
FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The J. Waties Waring Judicial Center in Charleston, South Carolina is on the National Register of Historic Buildings. There is a marker outside that proclaims it as the courthouse where Thurgood Marshall tried Briggs v. Elliott, one of the cases consolidated into the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education and heard by a three-judge panel including the courthouse's namesake J. Waties Waring. It sits at the "Four Corners of the Law," an intersection in downtown Charleston where the federal courthouse, the state courthouse, the City of Charleston City Hall, and St. Michael's Episcopal Church face each other. Every day, tour guides leading tourists from across the world in walking groups and in horse-drawn carriages pause at the Four Corners of the Law to talk about its significance. It is in this courthouse that the court heard testimony from numerous witnesses and considered voluminous evidence on the constitutionality of the City of Charleston's tour guide licensing law ("the licensing law") during a weeklong bench trial. And it is in this courthouse that the court reluctantly strikes down the licensing law as unconstitutional under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
On January 28, 2016, plaintiffs filed a complaint alleging that the licensing law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment, both facially and as applied. Plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction and the City of Charleston ("the City") moved to dismiss the complaint. The court denied both motions on July 1, 2016. ECF No. 27. On January 27, 2017, the parties filed motions for summary judgment. The court denied both motions on September 25, 2017. ECF No. 79. Thus, this matter came to a head, and the court tried this case without a jury from April 9th, 2018 until April 12, 2018. During the bench trial, the court heard from multiple witnesses and reviewed voluminous evidence. Having considered the testimony and the exhibits admitted at trial, as well as the parties' pre-trial briefs and post-trial proposed findings and conclusions, the court now makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law in accordance with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a).
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...Problems with Unscrupulous Tour Guides in Tourist Destinations" that was filed by the City of Charleston in Billups v. City of Charleston, S.C., 331 F. Supp. 3d 500 (D.S.C. 2018). The City, in its response to Plaintiff's Second Motion for Summary Judgment, states that these reports "are ten......
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Billups v. City of Charleston
...by its Order of August 3, 2018, the court memorialized its findings of fact and conclusions of law. See Billups v. City of Charleston, S.C. , 331 F.Supp.3d 500 (D.S.C. 2018), ECF No. 115 (the "Trial Order").5 In the Trial Order, the district court reiterated its prior ruling — made in the I......