Saturday, November 20, 2010

Tattoos are protected by the First Amendment

You can definitely say that California likes to pave the way for the rest of the country when comes to groundbreaking issues, whether it be about the environment, and now tattoos.  There has been a long going court case back to 2006 between Johnny Anderson of Yer Cheat'n Heart Tattoo and the City of Hermosa Beach.  Johnny wanted to relocate his shop to Hermosa Beach, but was not allowed to because Hermosa Beach had a city wide ban on tattooing.  This is a very dangerous practice by the city and its health department because instead of protecting the public's health and safety as they intend, they are actually putting them more at risk.  Artists start tattooing out of their homes and travel to people's homes to perform the tattoos.  This is wrong in so many ways, but that alone is another post.  One of the arguments from the city was that they did not have the man power to inspect all the tattoo shops.  Well, the courts replied that this was not a sufficient reason to ban something that was protect in our Constitution.  Marisa Kakoulas, a lawyer and tattoo activist, of Needlesandsins.com has done a wonderful job of turning a 26 page court ruling into something we can all read and understand.  Take a few minutes to read about this very important ruling.

First Amendment Ruling

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