Limits on Political Signs on Private property Unconstitutional
If your interested in the city councils efforts to produce a new sign ordinace you may find this helpful. Remember this issue was prompted by an interest to limit political signs.
The Center for Individual Freedom has published a helpful paper on the problem of limits on speech through political signs. Any time limit on the posting of political signs on private property appears clearly unconstitutional.
Special restrictions on political or campaign signs are a second content-based distinction often found in sign ordinances. Given the fact that political speech lies at the core of the First Amendment, any such special regulations that single out political or campaign signs are extremely problematic and presumptively unconstitutional.
The complete paper on Sign Ordinances Constitutional Limitations
Posted: April 4th, 2008 under At Large, City Council, City Hall, City RC, County Election, Election 2008, Federal US govt, State Elections, US Federal Elections.
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Time: May 23, 2008, 9:34 am
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SIGN ORDINANCES:
A PRIMER ON
CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS
3. Content-Based vs. Content-Neutral Restrictions
As seen in the Metromedia decision, courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have constitutionally allowed local governments to make the content-based distinction between on-site and off-site in restricting commercial signs. However, beyond this distinction, sign ordinances that prohibit or regulate signs based on their content are subject to the highest constitutional scrutiny under the First Amendment and are presumptively invalid.
Local governments often make one of two mistakes in enacting content-based sign ordinances. These mistakes render the resulting content-based sign ordinance subject to the highest constitutional scrutiny and often are constitutionally fatal. First, many sign ordinances define the different categories of signs to be regulated based on the subject matter or message conveyed. For instance, in North Olmstead Chamber of Commerce v. City of North Olmstead, the city’s sign ordinance defined the various sign categories by reference to their content, e.g., “Bulletin Board,” “Directional Sign,” “Identification Sign,” “Informational Sign,” “Organizational Sign,” “Nameplate,” “Project Sign,” “Real Estate Sign,” “Murals,”
“Political Signs,” etc.34 Of course, while such definitions are easy to understand, they also raise the particular concern the Constitution tries to avoid in disfavoring content-based speech distinctions — namely, that the government will attempt to restrict certain speech based on its disfavored subject or viewpoint. As such, sign ordinances that categorize the signs subject to regulation by the messages conveyed are content-based and almost always violate the First Amendment.
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