Cite as: 535 U. S. 425 (2002)
Syllabus
essarily correct. Therefore, it must be concluded that the city, at this stage of the litigation, has complied with Renton's evidentiary requirement. Pp. 433-442.
(b) The Court need not resolve the parties' dispute over whether the city can rely on evidence from Hart Book Stores to overcome summary judgment, nor respondents' alternative argument that the ordinance is not a time, place, and manner regulation, but is effectively a ban on adult video arcades that must be subjected to strict scrutiny. Pp. 442-443.
Justice Kennedy concluded that this Court's precedents may allow Los Angeles to impose its regulation in the exercise of the zoning authority, and that the city is not, at least, to be foreclosed by summary judgment. Pp. 444-453.
(a) Under Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, if a city can decrease the crime and blight associated with adult businesses by exercising its zoning power, and at the same time leave the quantity and accessibility of speech substantially undiminished, there is no First Amendment objection, even if the measure identifies the problem outside the establishments by reference to the speech inside—that is, even if the measure is content based. On the other hand, a city may not regulate the secondary effects of speech by suppressing the speech itself. For example, it may not impose a content-based fee or tax, see Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 230, even if the government purports to justify the fee by reference to secondary effects, see Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U. S. 123, 134-135. That the ordinance at issue is more a typical land-use restriction than a law suppressing speech is suggested by the fact that it is not limited to expressive activities, but extends, e. g., to massage parlors, which the city has found to cause the same undesirable secondary effects; also, it is just one part of an elaborate web of land-use regulations intended to promote the social value of the land as a whole without suppressing some activities or favoring others. Thus, the ordinance is not so suspect that it must be subjected to the strict scrutiny that content-based laws demand in other instances. Rather, it calls for intermediate scrutiny, as Renton held. Pp. 445-447.
(b) Renton's description of an ordinance similar to Los Angeles' as "content neutral," 475 U. S., at 48, was something of a fiction. These ordinances are content based, and should be so described. Nevertheless, Renton's central holding is sound. Pp. 448-449.
(c) The necessary rationale for applying intermediate scrutiny is the promise that zoning ordinances like the one at issue may reduce the costs of secondary effects without substantially reducing speech. If two adult businesses are under the same roof, an ordinance requir-
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