The state-law line, stated as law — and as a negative

INDIANA CODE § 35-45-1-5 · LONG v. STATE · BROADHACKER v. CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS

The state-law line is stated here as law. Indiana's public-indecency statute, Indiana Code § 35-45-1-5, makes it an offence to appear in a state of nudity in a "public place" or to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual conduct in a public place; the statute's reach turns on whether the place is public, and the private-club question is the hinge. The reported Indiana appellate law on that hinge is two cases, and neither is a zoning case against a swingers club. First, Long v. State, 666 N.E.2d 1258 (Ind. Ct. App. 1996): a dancer at Regina's House of Dolls argued the club was private and the indecency statute did not apply; the court rejected the claim, because any adult member of the public could enter at will by completing a membership card — a paper door is not a private door. Second, and the only reported Indiana appellate case that tests an ordinance against an actual swingers social club, Broadhacker v. City of Indianapolis, 864 N.E.2d 372 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007), printed whole at boundary size in the next article: the court refused to hold, as a matter of law, that the Indianapolis club Reel One was not a private club, and sent the question back as a genuine issue of fact. The line as the cases draw it is therefore this: a members-only door does not by itself make a commercial club a private place — Long says a card at the door is not enough — but it does not by itself fail either — Broadhacker says a genuinely restricted membership can be private, and whether it is one is a fact to be proved, not a label to be assumed. And the negative the checklist asks for is printed as a negative: no reported Indiana appellate case tests the public-indecency statute against a swingers social club, and no reported Indiana case — appellate or federal — tests a zoning code against a swingers social club. The category has been legislated about and, in Indianapolis, litigated about under a nuisance ordinance; it has never been litigated about under the statute or the zoning code that would govern it here. The Supreme Court case the county does own in this field, Barnes v. Glen Theatre, 501 U.S. 560 (1991) — brought by the St. Joseph County prosecutor against two South Bend establishments, the Kitty Kat Lounge and the Glen Theatre, over totally nude dancing — upheld Indiana's public-indecency law against a First Amendment challenge; it is about dancers on a stage in South Bend, not about a club, and it is printed here as that boundary fact and no more.

Sources: Indiana Code § 35-45-1-5 (public indecency). Long v. State, 666 N.E.2d 1258 (Ind. Ct. App. 1996). Broadhacker v. City of Indianapolis, 864 N.E.2d 372 (Ind. Ct. App. 2007), as reported in Justia's Indiana Court of Appeals decisions, read November 2026. Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560 (1991).