Mo. Rev. Stat. § 573.525 (2026)

  573.525.  Purpose — findings. — 1.  It is the purpose of sections 573.525 to 573.537 to regulate sexually oriented businesses in order to promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the citizens of this state, and to establish reasonable and uniform regulations to prevent the deleterious secondary effects of sexually oriented businesses within the state.  The provisions of sections 573.525 to 573.537 have neither the purpose nor effect of imposing a limitation or restriction on the content or reasonable access to any communicative materials, including sexually oriented materials.  Similarly, it is neither the intent nor effect of sections 573.525 to 573.537 to restrict or deny access by adults to sexually oriented materials protected by the first amendment, or to deny access by the distributors and exhibitors of sexually oriented entertainment to their intended market.  Neither is it the intent nor effect of sections 573.525 to 573.537 to condone or legitimize the distribution of obscene material.

  2.  The general assembly finds that:

  (1)  Sexually oriented businesses, as a category of commercial enterprises, are associated with a wide variety of adverse secondary effects, including but not limited to personal and property crimes, prostitution, potential spread of disease, lewdness, public indecency, obscenity, illicit drug use and drug trafficking, negative impacts on surrounding properties, urban blight, litter, and sexual assault and exploitation;

  (2)  Sexually oriented businesses should be separated from sensitive land uses to minimize the impact of their secondary effects upon such uses, and should be separated from other sexually oriented businesses, to minimize the secondary effects associated with such uses and to prevent an unnecessary concentration of sexually oriented businesses in one area;

  (3)  Each of the foregoing negative secondary effects constitutes a harm which the state has a substantial interest in preventing or abating, or both.  Such substantial government interest in preventing secondary effects, which is the state's rationale for sections 573.525 to 573.537, exists independent of any comparative analysis between sexually oriented and nonsexually oriented businesses.  Additionally, the state's interest in regulating sexually oriented businesses extends to preventing future secondary effects of current or future sexually oriented businesses that may locate in the state.