The summer the city tried to ban it

July — August 2019

Two ordinances: On July 23, 2019, the city administration brought two sexually-oriented-business ordinances before the City Council. One would establish licensing and conduct rules for sexually oriented businesses generally — the bill that became Ordinance G-19-19, whose court history belongs to the cabarets and is told in the Bars & Nightclubs section. The other was aimed at a category of one: it would ban "live sex act clubs" from Fort Wayne, and as WANE-TV reported the night it was introduced, there was currently only one such club in town. The administration's stated case, as the station summarized it, was that strip clubs contribute to crime and live sex act clubs to disease. The Champagne Club's owner, reached before the meeting, declined to comment on his attorney's advice. The club's southwest-side neighbor, the Telectro business next door, was interviewed as the adjoining property owner.

The vote: The ban came to a vote on August 13, 2019, at a packed meeting. As WANE's reporter summarized the evening, several council members said they were not convinced by the city's arguments that the club was a health risk or a public nuisance, and that the question had come down to morality — whether their personal morals should govern what consenting adults do in a private club. The ordinance failed: three votes for, three against, one abstention. The companion ordinance regulating the cabarets passed the same night. The Champagne Club was not closed, licensed out of existence, or — in any case the record reached — sued; a ban that needed a majority of the council died one vote short of a tie it could survive, and the club outlasted the administration that proposed it.

Sources:

1. WANE-TV (WANE 15), broadcast reports of July 23 and August 13, 2019, as recorded in the station's FCC issues report for the third quarter of 2019 — the ordinances' introduction, the administration's stated grounds, the packed meeting, and the 3–3–1 vote.
2. B&S of Fort Wayne, Inc. v. City of Fort Wayne, Indiana Court of Appeals (October 29, 2020) — the companion ordinance, G-19-19, adopted the same August 13, 2019 meeting; the cabarets' case, cross-referenced to Bars & Nightclubs.