KS: One who doesn’t have an administrative license can’t challenge the administrative search scheme under it

An unlicensed entertainment establishment has no standing to challenge the administrative search provision under the licensing scheme. City of Wichita v. Trotter, 2020 Kan. App. LEXIS 69 (Sept. 25, 2020):

But Trotter’s final constitutional claim fails for a more fundamental reason: Trotter never applied for an entertainment-establishment license. He was never subject to the regulatory investigations he now challenges and has no standing to contest the reasonableness of those regulatory requirements. See Creecy v. Kansas Department of Revenue, 310 Kan. 454, 461, 447 P.3d 959 (2019) (standing requires a person to “‘show a cognizable injury and establish a causal connection between the injury and the challenged conduct'”). Any decision we might render regarding the Code’s inspection requirements would have no impact on Trotter’s conviction for operating an entertainment establishment without a license.

A party who lacks standing requests an advisory opinion, which is beyond our jurisdiction to render. 310 Kan. at 460. Accord City News & Novelty, Inc. v. City of Waukesha, 531 U.S. 278, 283-84, 121 S. Ct. 743, 148 L. Ed. 2d 757 (2001) (declining to reach challenge to city’s licensing framework for sellers of sexually explicit materials when business “neither now pursues nor currently expresses an intent to pursue a license under Waukesha law”). Thus, we do not reach the merits of Trotter’s challenge to the licensing framework’s inspection requirements.

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