Sign Victory

It looks like Dennis Ballen, proprietor of Blazing Bagels in Redmond, Washington, is going to prevail in his First Amendment challenge to the city's sign regulations. Concluding that Ballen (represented by the Institute for Justice) is likely to win the case, a federal judge this week enjoined the city from enforcing its ban on portable signs like the one Ballen has used to attract customers ("Fresh Bagels--Now Open").

The judge concluded there is little sense to the ban, which "distinguishes between different types of commercial portable signs (e.g., allowing real estate signs while banning other commercial signs including the disputed bagel signs) and between commercial and non-commercial portable signs (e.g., allowing political signs while banning bagel signs)." He noted "there is no evidence in the record that the banned signs are less aesthetically appealing or more harmful to traffic and pedestrian safety than the permitted signs." Hence the ordinance "is more extensive than necessary and not narrowly tailored to the City's interests because the City could have possibly implemented reasonable content-neutral time, place and manner regulations, such as those the City has implemented for real estate signs, for all portable signs."

Comments

[dlc]

Okay, let's imagine a situation where the court does indeed rule that a law that holds political signs are okay and 'commercial' speech signs are prohibited is valid. Then let's assume the City passes such law. Is the bagel shop in compliance if it modifies its portable sign to read

"Fresh Bagels--Now Open--Fuck the City of Redmond"
??

-dlc-

[uberkind]

dlc,

No, because the "Now Open" could still be construed as commercial. I'd try "F Redmond! Eat Bagels!" as that's a more general exhortation toward a starch-heavy lifestyle and not expressly advertising a particular vendor of bagels.

[Paar]

Why not a real estate/promotional hybrid? "Blazing Bagels: try our starchy tori or buy the shop!" Little will prospective shopowners realize that the price of Ballen's bagel bakery is an outrageous 4 jillion dollars!

What a ridiculous law.

[joe]

BTW, I never said the law wasn't ridiculous.

[Warren]

"The judge found that the City's ordinance "distinguishes between different types of commercial portable signs (e.g., allowing real estate signs while banning other commercial signs including the disputed bagel signs) and between commercial and non-commercial portable signs (e.g., allowing political signs while banning bagel signs)."

[dlc]

Uberkind, Warren, et. al. You're right, but what happens if you mix political and commercial in one sign? Wouldn't a restriction of such signs, or a law saying signs having a political message may not have a commercial message, restrict the political speech, especially if the two were actually connected in a meaningful way?

Bottom line is it is a stupid law. Where does the political end and commercial start? If I put up a sign saying "Contribute to Howard Dean's Campaign" is that political or commercial? It's obviously political in nature, but a political campaign is still a commercial operation - it takes in funds and delivers a product of sorts.

Maybe none of this matters, as we all seem to agree it is a pointless law to begin with...anyone want to defend such laws?

[Warren]

dlc,
I think you might be missing the point. The judge ruled that since the law makes arbitrary distinctions, it is therefore unconstitutional. Joe was claiming that IJ "included exactly zero quotes from the decision about the commercial/political issue", so I copied and pasted the quote to negate his entire post.

[joe]

IJ is reaching in trying to spin this as a erosion of the commercial speech/political speech distinction. The judge ruled that the city could have easily achieved its states goals (preventing pedestrian traffic from being held up by people wearing sandwich boards on the sidewalk) through a time-place-manner regulation. Signs allowed under the current ordinance included real estate signs and parties, hardly political speech.

I note that IJ's statement included exactly zero quotes from the decision about the commercial/political speech issue. It would appear that the judge ruled that an ordinance allowing some kinds of commercial speech, but outlawing others, failed to draw a meaningful distinction between the two types of commercial speech. By allowing real estate signs, the city was admitting that commercial signs could be allowed without infringing on the legitimate interests behind the law. So the distinction-without-a-difference in this case is between two types of commercial speech, not commercial vs. political.

[joe]

Read the article, Warren. The decision does not draw on the protection afforded to poltical speech.

[joe]

...and while I do seem to have overstate the absence of the term "political speech" in the IJ's release, that error by itself hardly negates the entirety of my post.