The dangers of censorship are less threatening when it comes to licensing schemes. Unlike censors, who pass judgment on the
content of expression, licensing officials look at more mundane and ministerial factors in deciding whether to issue a license.
See 11126 Baltimore Boulevard, 58 F.3d at 1003 (Niemeyer, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (no need for a guarantee of a prompt judicial decision in the absence of a
direct prior restraint on speech);
see also FW/PBS, 493 U.S. at 229, 110 S.Ct. 596 (Licensing officials do not pass judgment “on the content of any protected speech”; rather, they look at “the general qualifications of each license applicant, a ministerial action that is not presumptively invalid.”). Indeed,
Shuttlesworth limits licensing officials to the mundane and the ministerial.
See Lady J. Lingerie, 176 F.3d at 1362 (holding that
Shuttlesworth requires licensing standards to be “
precise and
objective ”). Furthermore, applicants for adult entertainment licenses, unlike movie distributors who might show a given film in hundreds of theaters around the country, have every incentive to stick it out and see litigation through to its end.
Cf. FW/PBS, 493 U.S. at 229–30, 110 S.Ct. 596 (plurality opinion) (no need to put burden of going to court and burden of proof on licensing officials because license applicants have the incentive to go to court). The need for a prompt judicial decision is therefore less compelling for licensing ordinances than for censorship schemes.