Long Beach planning officials are recommending a proposal that would make it easier for tattoo artists to open new businesses in the city following civil rights litigation over whether existing laws are in line with the First Amendment.

The new proposal would significantly reduce zoning restrictions for tattoo parlors, while also eliminating the need for people who want to run a tattoo shop in Long Beach to go through the oft-lengthy process of securing a conditional use permit. The proposal follows tattoo artist James Real’s 2013 decision to go to court in order to challenge a city law that he views as something that unfairly restricted his freedom use his own business judgement when he was looking for a place to open a tattoo parlor in Long Beach.

“I’m going to open a business in the location I think is best,” Real said in a telephone interview.

Long Beach Planning Commission members may decide during its Thursday meeting on whether to recommend the proposal to the City Council.

The proposal to update city zoning laws still contains some restrictions for tattoo shops, such as a 500-foot buffer between schools and other tattoo parlors, but that distance would be shorter than the 1,000-foot buffer between shops that Long Beach’s current law requires. Additional provisions within the new proposal would further reduce substantial obstacles that City Hall has placed in the way of tattooers seeking to do business in Long Beach.

“We got sued, which is never fun, but it gave us the opportunity to update the code and make it better,” said Christopher Koontz, an advance planning officer for Long Beach’s Development Services Department.

Fewer restrictions on ink

For one, the proposed law would allow tattoo shops to operate in commercial zones where they have not been previously allowed. Current city law limits tattoo parlors to areas that include certain commercial zones, such as those along stretches of arterial streets like Pacific Coast Highway. Tattoo parlors are also legal in parts of both downtown or the Midtown Specific Plan area, which sets rules to develop land in the vicinity of a 2.5 -mile part of Long Beach Boulevard.

Although buffering requirements would prevent tattoo shops from being set up on some parcels, the new proposal would otherwise allow tattoo artists to set up shop in nearly any area of Long Beach that’s zoned for commercial activity. An exception would apply to land zoned for commercial storage operations.

The new proposal would also streamline the approval process by eliminating the need for anyone who wants to open a tattoo parlor in Long Beach to obtain a conditional use permit. The process of obtaining such a permit requires a public hearing that may result in city officials imposing specific restrictions on a given business, and as noted in a staff report, several months may elapse between the time when a business owner asks for such a permit and the required hearing takes place.

The lawsuit behind the proposal

Tattoo artist James Real, who presently works at American Beauty Tattoo Parlor in Huntington Beach, filed a lawsuit against Long Beach officials in March 2013 that contended the city’s restrictions on tattoo shops violated the Constitution.

The merits of Real’s case have yet to be decided. Although the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Real’s standing to bring the case against City Hall, justices remanded the case back down to the District Court level for any further consideration of its legal issues.

Although the lawsuit presents the question of whether Long Beach’s existing law gives city officials too much discretion to say where tattoo shops can and cannot be located, assistant city attorney Mike Mais said City Hall has never actually denied anyone permission to open a tattoo parlor.

“It’s a different day, and the stigma of tattoos and the negative connotation of that is long gone,” he said.

Real’s attorney is Robert Moest, who in 2010 represented a client who won a similar, precedent-setting case in Hermosa Beach. That city’s council shortly thereafter adopted an ordinance allowing tattoo parlors and piercing studios to do business there.

Moest said he hadn’t seen Long Beach’s proposal as of Thursday afternoon, adding he sees no reason for tattoo shops to be subject to stringent restrictions.

“It should be like a hair salon in terms of zoning,” Moest said.

Long Beach presently has nine licensed tattoo shops within its territory. Although the city staff report for Thursday’s planning commission refers to research linking tattoos to high-risk behavior in adolescents (tattoo artists cannot legally provide their services to anyone under the age of 18 in California), the document also shows that Long Beach vice detectives have not encountered any repeated problems with any of Long Beach’s nine tattoo shops.

The Planning Commission’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. Thursday at City Hall, 333 W. Ocean Boulevard.