AUSTINTOWN Lounge files suit against township

The zoning appeals board stayed its proceedings pending the outcome of the federal case.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- The township is being waltzed into federal court over a zoning provision concerning exotic dancing and sexually oriented businesses.
A lawyer representing The Rebel Lounge has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of part of the township's zoning ordinance.
Atty. Stephen R. Garea filed the suit against the township Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Youngstown on behalf of Leber Inc., which operates the lounge in a business district at 5335 Seventy-Six Drive.
About lawsuit: The suit says the section of the zoning ordinance under which Michael P. Kurilla Jr., township zoning inspector, cited the lounge for regularly featuring topless dancers without getting special permission to operate a sexually oriented business, is unconstitutional.
Garea said the section violates the First Amendment freedom of expression provisions, Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, Fifth Amendment prohibition against taking of private property without just compensation and 14th Amendment due process provision of the U.S. Constitution.
"The legislation is arbitrary, oppressive and capricious and unreasonably requires the plaintiff to submit to controls not imposed on other similarly situated businesses or properties," the suit says.
The lounge had appealed Kurilla's notice of violation to the township board of zoning appeals, which had scheduled a hearing on the matter for Thursday evening.
Received a stay: As the hearing was to begin, Garea asked for and received from the board a stay of its proceedings pending the outcome of the lawsuit he had filed just hours earlier. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Peter C. Economus, who sits in Youngstown.
Garea said he will seek to have the Rebel case combined with a pending federal case filed against the township on behalf of the Babylon lounge, which challenges the same section of the zoning ordinance and is before Judge Economus. The board issued a similar stay of its proceedings in the Babylon case, Garea said.
Kurilla said he believes the sexually oriented business section of the township zoning ordinance is constitutional "until otherwise told by a court."