Photo: Will Warasila, New Yorker
“The small city of Bel-Nor, Missouri is at least temporarily blocked from enforcing a local law that restricts homeowners from displaying more than one sign at a time on their property, under a federal appeals court ruling issued on Monday.
Lawrence Willson, who owns and lives in a single-family home in Bel-Nor, sued the city in January 2018, alleging the ordinance trammeled his free speech rights and other constitutional protections. The city cited him because he had three signs in his yard.
One said ‘Black Lives Matter,’ another ‘Clinton Kaine’ and the third ‘Jason Kander U.S. Senate.’ Each of the signs is about 18 by 24 inches, according to Tony Rothert, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, who is representing Willson.
“In our view, a one-sign restriction is too restrictive of speech,’ Rothert said by phone on Monday.
He went on to describe yard signs as an important form of speech with a ‘communicative value that is unmatched’ in other mediums.
‘It’s different than buying a billboard, or taking out an ad in the paper, or even writing a letter to the editor, to put what you believe in front of your home,’ Rothert said.
The city has argued that its ordinance is ‘content-neutral’ and regulates all sorts of signs in the same way, and is therefore not subject to heightened legal scrutiny. It has cited traffic safety, especially preventing distractions for drivers, as a main consideration with the sign restrictions…
A federal district court last March denied Willson’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which would have prevented Bel-Nor from enforcing the law, at least while the court case played out.
But a three-judge panel for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has now reversed that decision.
In an 11-page ruling, the court said Willson is likely to succeed on the merits of his free speech challenge under the First Amendment against the local government ordinance and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.
A Bel-Nor police officer in June 2017 left Willson a written warning that by displaying his three signs he was violating part of the city code, according to the complaint Willson filed in federal district court.
The code, at that time, limited residential property to one ‘political advertising’ sign and said ‘political signs’ had to be removed within 15 days after an election.”
— Bill Lucia, Route Fifty
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