Tattoo company files First Amendment lawsuit to challenge South Carolina’s restrictions on protected expression

Tiny Zaps is a New York-based tattoo company offering small, artist-designed tattoos. Customers can choose to book online or visit one of their many pop-up locations. A popular hotel in the heart of Charleston, South Carolina, has expressed interest in bringing in Tiny Zaps as an onsite pop-up—a partnership the company is eager to pursue.

Its prospective customers include South Carolinians Josh and Stephanie McDonald. The couple lives in Greenville with their two young daughters. Josh works as an electrician, Stephanie as a fitness instructor. Both Josh and Stephanie value tattoos as a form of self-expression and would like to get additional tattoos above their shoulders.

But South Carolina bans tattoo facilities within 1,000 feet of a church, school, or playground—a buffer that leaves few viable locations in a state with more than 7,000 churches. State law also makes it a crime to tattoo anyone’s head, face, or neck.

South Carolina already safeguards public health and safety with licensing, sanitation, training, and inspection requirements. What it cannot do is treat tattooing as second-class expression based on outdated stigma or moral discomfort. The proximity rule and the head-face-neck ban do nothing to make tattooing safer; instead, they reflect the State’s disapproval of tattoo art and those who create it.

Under the First Amendment, tattooing is protected expression. The government cannot impose special burdens on speech simply because it disapproves of the message or the medium.

Represented at no cost by Pacific Legal Foundation, Tiny Zaps and the McDonalds filed a First Amendment lawsuit challenging both of South Carolina’s restrictions on tattooing. A victory in this case would affirm that artists keep their First Amendment rights regardless of their canvas, and that South Carolina cannot use zoning maps and criminal law to decide which art is protected.