Myrtle Beach biker noise limit faces lawsuit

As Myrtle Beach prepares to adjust some of its ordinances passed in 2008 to quell the May motorcycle rallies, it faces another legal challenge that could require more changes.

Some residents and other motorcycle enthusiasts are suing the city, hoping the Horry County Circuit Court will overturn the city's noise ordinance.

Under the final version of the noise ordinance amendment, which gained final approval in March 2009, no vehicles except emergency vehicles can be louder than 89 decibels when measured from 20 inches away from the exhaust pipe, at a 45-degree angle, while the vehicle is idling.

Virginia-based attorney Tom McGrath filed the lawsuit last week on behalf of local motel owner William O'Day, Horry County and S.C. ABATE groups and other residents, he said.

The lawsuit says the city's law interferes with the uniformity of state law, that it is pre-empted by state law and is unconstitutional.

McGrath's challenge to the city's helmet ordinance prevailed in the S.C. Supreme Court, with an opinion issued earlier this month. The five justices unanimously agreed that the state has already covered the issue of who has to wear motorcycle helmets and that the city could not make its own rules because there must be a uniform traffic code.

The court also said that because the city had rescinded the administrative hearing ordinance it passed to deal with local helmet law violations as infractions, it had impliedly invalidated its own helmet law.

McGrath said he felt it best to give the Circuit Court the first chance to make the decision in this case.

"Let's see if the judge will follow the Supreme Court's opinion," he said.

The noise ordinance wasn't included in the case the high court heard in February, he said, because the focus was on the helmet law.

"They were issuing tickets left and right [under the helmet law]," he said. "No one we know had gotten a ticket under the noise ordinance. It's still sitting there, and the city has bought decibel meters, so we assume they are planning to use them. We felt we shouldn't let the ordinance stay on the books."

The city has issued noise ordinance tickets since the rule went into effect in 2008, said city spokesman Mark Kruea, but because the city's noise rules cover music, cars, other equipment and mufflers, he said without pulling each ticket by hand, he didn't know how many were motorcycle-related.

"We wrote 1,776 city noise ordinance violations for all types of excessive noise and an additional 64 state muffler violations from Oct. 1, 2008, to July 19, 2010," Kruea said in an e-mail.

The court's opinion on the helmet law also reached into the package of 14 ordinances and amendments the city approved in 2008, invalidating four others as well.

The city still had four other violations listed as administrative infractions - the rules about hotel check-in procedures, the juvenile curfew, the rules about drinking in parking lots and regulations about convenience-store security procedures.

At today's council meeting, city leaders will consider making those violations into misdemeanors.

Because of the Supreme Court ruling, the city will refund between $13,000 and $14,000 in fines and interest payments on the 135 helmet tickets issued under the ordinance, Kruea said. The city took in $13,275 in fines, he said.

Though the fine for a helmet violation was $100, Kruea said some people paid incorrect amounts, and some had not paid in full by the time the court's opinion was issued.