Choosing to forgo a legal career and instead blog about motorcycles for a living, I of course have to comment on an interesting case that is about to hit a federal court in South Carolina, which concerns whether motorcyclists have a constitutional right to perform a burnout on their motorcycles. Before we all have a collective eyeroll on legitimizing squidly behavior on city streets, consider the central fact of this case is that the behavior in question was not preformed on a public road, but instead on private property.

The issue here stems from a biker hangout know for its burnout competitions, as Suck Bang Blow of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina found its permit for hosting biker parties to include an interesting outright ban on motorcycle burnouts for the 2012 rally season. This differs a bit from previous years, as past permits from Horry County simply limited the hours and locations that such activities could occur (from noon to 9pm, at the back of the building).

Calling the noise from the burnouts a nuisance, the county has banned all burnouts within its borders, stating it has the right to do so under state law (presumably that reasoning stems from basic nuisance analysis in tort law). SBB disagrees however, and after winning an emergency injunction, has taken the case to federal court. Arguing that burnouts are a protected form of speech that display male machismo (our words, not theirs), the biker bar hopes that federal judges will find that the act of performing a burnout is an action protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.