Cite as: 535 U. S. 425 (2002)
Souter, J., dissenting
assumption behind the amendment itself, that a conglomeration of adult businesses under one roof, as in a minimall or adult department store, will produce undesirable secondary effects comparable to what a cluster of separate adult establishments brings about, ante, at 436. That may or may not be so. The assumption that is clearly unsupported, however, goes to the city's supposed interest in applying the amendment to the book and video stores in question, and in applying it to break them up. The city, of course, claims no interest in the proliferation of adult establishments, the ostensible consequence of splitting the sales and viewing activities so as to produce two stores where once there was one. Nor does the city assert any interest in limiting the sale of adult expressive material as such, or reducing the number of adult video booths in the city, for that would be clear content-based regulation, and the city was careful in its 1977 report to disclaim any such intent. App. 54.4
4 Finally, the city does not assert an interest in curbing any secondary effects within the combined bookstore-arcades. In Hart Book Stores, Inc. v. Edmisten, 612 F. 2d 821 (1979), the Fourth Circuit upheld a similar ban in North Carolina, relying in part on a county health department report on the results of an inspection of several of the combined adult bookstore-video arcades in Wake County, North Carolina. Id., at 828-829, n. 9. The inspection revealed unsanitary conditions and evidence of salacious activities taking place within the video cubicles. Ibid. The city introduces this case to defend its breakup policy although it is not clear from the opinion how separating these video arcades from the adult bookstores would deter the activities that took place within them. In any event, while Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41 (1986), allowed a city to rely on the experiences and studies of other cities, it did not dispense with the requirement that "whatever evidence the city relies upon [be] reasonably believed to be relevant to the problem that the city addresses," id., at 51-52, and the evidence relied upon by the Fourth Circuit is certainly not necessarily relevant to the Los Angeles ordinance. Since November 1977, five years before the enactment of the ordinance at issue, Los Angeles has regulated adult video booths, prohibiting doors, setting minimum levels of lighting, and requiring that their interiors be fully visible from the entrance to the premises. Los Angeles Municipal Code §§ 103.101(i), (j). Thus, it seems less likely that the un-
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