A Seaside Heights law aimed at curbing after-prom parties in the Jersey Shore town is being challenged by a group of hotel and motel owners. (Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images)
Seaside Heights officials appeared in a courtroom Tuesday to defend a local law banning 18- to 20-year-olds from renting hotels and motels during the after-prom season, saying they want to change the culture of the town that garnered national attention from MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”
Kevin Riordan, an attorney representing the Ocean County borough, said its governing body determined that prom celebrations there are “disturbing to the rest of the residents.”
‘They’re allowed to make that determination. They’re allowed to say, ‘Not in hotel rooms, go somewhere else,’” Riordan said. “There really is no right to rent a hotel room in Seaside Heights during prom season.”
A panel of three appellate judges heard arguments Tuesday from attorneys from both the town and hotels in Seaside Heights who are at odds over the ordinance, which bars adults under 21 from renting rooms in hotels and motels from April 15 to June 30 each year. Violations come with a $2,000 fine.
Town officials have argued that when the state legalized cannabis, the annual tradition of young adults heading down the shore to celebrate after proms became “an uncontrollable hazard up and down the coastline of New Jersey.” The ordinance was part of a package of local laws intended to “curtail the season of heightened teen disturbances,” they said, including a curfew for anyone under 18 years old.
A group of motels sued the town, arguing the ordinance violates the New Jersey Civil Rights Act and the Law Against Discrimination. A lower-court judge dismissed the complaint.
Christopher Ryan O’Shea, an attorney representing the motels, argued Tuesday to the appellate judges that excluding a specific class of people like young adults amounts to discrimination. O’Shea said the broad statute targets “obnoxious behavior” rather than criminal behavior.
If the ordinance really intended to curtail crime, he said, it makes “zero sense” that it ends before the Fourth of July, a holiday that attracts rowdy crowds to the beaches (the Seaside Heights police chief said there was a brawl there last summer).
O’Shea noted that Fort Dix is just about 40 miles west of Seaside Heights.
“Adults who are between the ages of 18 and 21, who have the same ability to go to war and contract their bodies away, should have the same ability to contract to rent a hotel room in Seaside Heights,” he said.
The ordinance, which allows for 18 to 20-year-olds to stay in short-term rentals with family members, created other legal problems, O’Shea said. A 21-year-old who is engaged to their 20-year-old partner would not be able to rent a room together in Seaside Heights, said O’Shea.
That had one judge questioning — what if two consenting adults want to “get a room?”
Riordan responded that young people can rent a house or can go elsewhere, like Belmar, Seaside Park, or Point Pleasant. He added that the ordinance is tailored directly to solving a specific problem: young people coming to Seaside Heights to celebrate the end of high school.
“I still remember how careless an individual I was after my prom. I’m lucky to still be alive, and there are a number of others who I think can make the same claim,” he said. “All we’re doing is trying to address a problem with prom behavior.”
It’s not clear when the judge will issue a decision.
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