The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a District Court's grant of summary judgment to two adult bookstores. The stores had claimed that a Los Angeles ordinance requiring the dispersal of adult businesses violated the First Amendment. The Ninth Circuit found that the declarations upon which the summary judgment was based were biased did not amount to "actual and convincing" evidence sufficient to cast doubt on the rationale for the ordinance.

The ruling is the latest in a 15-year-old case that the court called "resilient." Yet the ruling settled nothing. All the Ninth Circuit did was return the case, known as Alameda Books, to District Court for trial. 

I have published so many corrections in my journalism career that I now write the correction along with the story. To wit: The following story is all made up. There is no draft EIR for the downtown football stadium yet. Yet few readers are aware that I possess the flawless crystal sphere of Nostradamus, which gives me super powers to see accurately into the future. (Note to editor: Do I have to run corrections for inaccurate statements about myself? I mean, who would know?)

Gosh, it's really, really hard to guess what the negative impacts might occur, when building a football stadium with seating for 70,000 or so people rises in downtown Los Angeles. Let's see now.

Quick: what economic sector most reminds you of Los Angeles? Hollywood? Aerospace? Yoga? According to sports and entertainment giant AEG and a certain pastoral insurance company, it's none of the above. 

Last week AEG announced that Los Angeles' nonexistant downtown football stadium, to be developed door to Staples Center and LA Live, will be funded in part by a sponsorship by Farmers Insurance. Thus, the world will know Los Angeles as the home of -- I'm not kidding -- Farmers Field. 

The Second District Court of Appeal has upheld a determination by the Department of Industrial Relations that required public improvements in a master planned community project to abide by prevailing wage laws. The court further ruled that Mello-Roos proceeds are "public funds," and that once a project is deemed a "public work" under the Prevailing Wage Law, all public portions of the project are subject to the law – including those public improvements that are privately financed.

A case involving the relationship of the Subdivision Map Act with the Coastal Act and Mello Act has been accepted for review by the state Supreme Court.

A National Football League team could be playing in downtown Los Angeles in less than five years.

So says Tim Leiweke, president of AEG, the development company owned by Phil Anschutz that wants to build a downtown football stadium.

A Santa Monica apartment complex owned by a religious group did not fall within a statutory exemption from local historic preservation regulations because the property has always been a commercial enterprise, the Second District Court of Appeal has ruled.

As its location suggests, Beverly Hills High School enjoys its share of amenities: a gym that converts to an indoor pool; a planetarium; a professional-quality theater. But, like most high schools, it does not have a class in urban planning or transportation. Now that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed extending the Purple Line subway under school grounds, Beverly High is getting a few lessons.

A city ordinance effectively banning tattoo parlors oversteps constitutional limits protecting freedom of expression, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

A unanimous three-judge panel struck down a City of Hermosa Beach zoning code prohibiting tattoo parlors because it violated the First Amendment. 

Although it may seem that tattoos are the provenance of modern day subcultures such as rock stars and motorcyclists, tattoos have been part of evolving culture around the globe for thousands of years, the court explained. City of Hermosa Beach, however, perceived tattoos' outlaw air and had adopted a zoning ordinance that precluded the operation of tattoo parlors.

Divine purposes do not give developers a free pass to circumvent local zoning regulations. 

The Second District Court of Appeal has ruled that Los Angeles County was entitled to a court order that prohibited a church from operating a school without a required conditional user permit.

The Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Church owns two parcels zoned R-1 (single-family residential) in the San Gabriel Valley. In May 2008, the church filed an application for a conditional use permit to operate an 800-student, K-12 school on the property. Four months later, the county received complaints that the school was operating in advance of the issuance of the conditional use permit and without California Environmental Quality Act review.