460
Souter, J., dissenting
crease crime or produce other negative secondary effects in surrounding neighborhoods, and we are thus left without substantial justification for viewing the city's First Amendment restriction as content correlated but not simply content based. By the same token, the city has failed to show any causal relationship between the breakup policy and elimination or regulation of secondary effects.
II
Our cases on the subject have referred to studies, undertaken with varying degrees of formality, showing the geographical correlations between the presence or concentration of adult business establishments and enhanced crime rates or depressed property values. See, e. g., Renton, supra, at 50-51; Young, 427 U. S., at 55. Although we have held that intermediate scrutiny of secondary-effects legislation does not demand a fresh evidentiary study of its factual basis if the published results of investigations elsewhere are "reasonably" thought to be applicable in a different municipal setting, Renton, supra, at 51-52, the city here took responsibility to make its own enquiry, App. 35-162. As already mentioned, the study was inconclusive as to any correlation between adult business and lower property values, id., at 45, and it reported no association between higher crime rates and any isolated adult establishments. But it did find a geographical correlation of higher concentrations of adult establishments with higher crime rates, id., at 43, and with this study in hand, Los Angeles enacted its 1978 ordinance requiring dispersion of adult stores and theaters. This original position of the ordinance is not challenged today, and I will assume its justification on the theory accepted in Young, that eliminating concentrations of adult establishments will spread out the documented secondary effects and render them more manageable that way.
The application of the 1983 amendment now before us is, however, a different matter. My concern is not with the
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