{"id":492,"date":"2016-06-30T21:42:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T21:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=492"},"modified":"2023-12-15T22:00:52","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T22:00:52","slug":"municipalities-cannot-regulate-political-content-of-signs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2016\/06\/30\/municipalities-cannot-regulate-political-content-of-signs\/","title":{"rendered":"Municipalities cannot regulate political content of signs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In the 2015 case of<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/14pdf\/13-502_9olb.pdf\" class=\"mtli_attachment mtli_pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0<em>Reed v. Town of Gilbert<\/em>,<\/a>\u00a0135 S.Ct. 2218 (2015), the Court struck down a local ordinance that banned \u201cideological signs\u201d that \u201ccommunicat[e] a message or ideas.\u201d The ordinance also limited \u201cpolitical signs\u201d to election season and limited the times when plaintiff church was allowed to post \u201cdirectional signs\u201d bearing the name of the church and the time and location of the next service.\u00a0The Court noted that content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional and could only be justified if they serve a compelling government interest, a showing that could not be made by the town. Further, the town had ample alternative ways to regulate the placement and size of signs to satisfy public safety and aesthetic concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"taxonomy-category wp-block-post-terms\"><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/free-speech\/\" rel=\"tag\">Free Speech<\/a><span class=\"wp-block-post-terms__separator\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/category\/zoning\/\" rel=\"tag\">Zoning<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the 2015 case of\u00a0Reed v. Town of Gilbert,\u00a0135 S.Ct. 2218 (2015), the Court struck down a local ordinance that banned \u201cideological signs\u201d that \u201ccommunicat[e] a message or ideas.\u201d The ordinance also limited \u201cpolitical signs\u201d to election season and limited the times when plaintiff church was allowed to post \u201cdirectional signs\u201d bearing the name of the church and the time and location of the next service.\u00a0The Court noted that content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional and could only be justified if they serve a compelling government interest, a showing that could not be made by the town. Further, the town had ample alternative ways to regulate the placement and size of signs to satisfy public safety and aesthetic concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-speech","category-zoning"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}