Marc Randazza Represents Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof in a First Amendment Case

Dennis Hof is represented by Marc Randazza and LaTeigra Cahill of the Randazza Legal Group.

A Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof recently filed a lawsuit against Nye County. He believes that his First Amendment rights were violated by the county officials, who instructed him to censor the street sign leading to his brothel due to the “objectionable” nature of two stick-figures on the sign.

The picture to the left above shows what the sign looked like before the county officials forced him to censor the sign, and the picture to the right shows what the sign looks like now.

“The U.S. Constitution is incredibly important to me and I am not going to allow a county commissioner to infringe on my First Amendment rights. He has no business doing that,” Mr. Hof said in an interview recently. “Just because he thinks something is objectionable doesn’t mean it is.”

Denis Hof installed a yellow and black, diamond-shaped street sign with “Lovers at Play” writing on it, so that people would not get lost in residential neighborhoods looking for Hof’s Love Ranch South. The sign didn’t contain any advertising for the brothel. The county simply did not like the stick figures on the sign. County Commissioner Dan Schinhofen censored the sign due to its content.

Marc Randazza, the managing partner of the Randazza Legal Group, commented on this situation, stating that Mr. Hof and his fellow brothel owners “have no desire to have their First Amendment rights trampled upon, and engaged in this self-censorship involuntarily after being threatened by the government”.

“He has signs with these expressive elements in them that we think he has every right to have under our most beloved amendment to our Constitution,” Randazza told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Certain civic-minded individuals have an understanding of what it means to be a patriot, and that’s how I look at Mr. Hof.”

Due to fear that officials would retaliate against him, Mr. Hof censored the sign based on their threats. Mr. Hof emphasized that the street sign had been there for at least a few years and, to his knowledge, no one complained about it. Hof filed a First Amendment lawsuit with the help of attorney Marc Randazza and LaTeigra Cahill of the Randazza Legal Group.

“Instead of hacking penises into the rocks and public roads, plaintiffs have taken a more modern approach of installing several signs along a path leading to the Love Ranch South so that potential visitors know they are heading in the right direction and to ensure that potential visitors do not get lost in the residential neighborhoods looking for the Love Ranch South,” the lawsuit asserts.

We will follow the case as it progresses and hope that Mr. Hof gets an injunction that could allow him to un-censor the street sign.