ACTION REQUESTED:
Title
Communication from the City Manager and Corporation Counsel with a Request to Consider ADOPTING an ORDINANCE Amending Chapter 18 of the CODE of the City of Peoria Pertaining to BODYWORK ESTABLISHMENTS.
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BACKGROUND:
Until 2005, Chapter 18 of the City's municipal code regulated massage establishments/massage services. The city deleted Chapter 18 on January 18, 2005 as "changes in the state statute gives exclusive jurisdiction and power to regulate and license massage therapy to the state through its Department of Professional Regulation." The Massage Licensing Act specifically prohibited home-rule municipalities from regulating or licensing massage therapy.
Although the Act appeared to limit the City's authority regulate massage businesses, the Court held otherwise. The authority of a municipality to regulate massage establishments was upheld in Kinghealth Spa Inc. v. Village of Downer's Grover (2014 Ill.App.2d 130825). The issue in that case was whether ta local licensing commission could revoke a massage parlors license. Interestingly, the Court relied on Wes Ward Enterprise, Ltd. v. Andrews (42 Ill.App.3d 458 (1976) where the court held that the City of Peoria's massage business ordinance was a reasonable exercise of the local government's police power. The court specifically noted the
holding in Wes Ward that "the ordinance provisions prohibiting nudity and the touching of sexual and genital areas were obviously designed to proscribe such unlawful conduct and to prevent unscrupulous persons from permitting massage establishments to be used for purposes of prostitution in violation of the Criminal Code for a single ordinance violation."
The City cannot license individual massage therapists but can license the establishments they work within. The City exercised its rights to license massage establishments on April 24, 2018 with the adoption of Ordinance No. 17,571. The ordinance contains an in-depth administrative process licen...
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