by TRC_Admin | Dec 28, 2021 | Codes, Legal
Photo: Michael Laughlin, South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP
“A South Florida woman wanted to make a statement with her Halloween costume by dressing up as a condo building project she opposes.
She says a local police officer warned her not to, but according to Facebook posts, she did it anyway.
Cat Uden has been an outspoken critic of a developer’s plan to build a 30-story condo on taxpayer-owned beachfront land in Hollywood, Florida.
Ahead of the city’s Hollyweird Halloween block party, Uden posted in a Facebook group encouraging others to dress up like the condo building or hold ‘No Condo’ signs to raise awareness for their cause, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports.
But Uden ran into an issue when she says a local officer told her the costume coordination plan would be considered a planned protest march, for which she needs a permit.
According to posts by Uden in the ‘Hollywood Residents-Speak Up’ Facebook group, she had previously applied for permits for protests she has held against the condo developer in the past but did not consider this plan a protest…
The Sun Sentinel reports that Uden and six of her friends followed through on the plan and wore their condo building costumes to the block party without issue. The newspaper adds that one woman toting a ‘No Condo’ sign says she even got a hug from a police sergeant…
There has been debate over similar issues in the Tampa Bay area after Sarasota City commissioners approved a developer’s plan to build a high-rise hotel on Siesta Key.
The plan was a point of contention between people who want to further develop Siesta Key to keep up with the area’s rapid growth and those living in the area who don’t want to see their home overrun by high-rise hotels. ”
— Michael Laughlin, South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP
Read entire article
by TRC_Admin | Oct 30, 2021 | Billboards, Legal
“A tax levied by the city of Cincinnati on billboard companies in an effort to close a budget shortfall is an unconstitutional of First Amendment rights to free speech, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Justice Sharon Kennedy, writing the court’s unanimous opinion, said the companies, as publishers of speech, can’t be singled out for engaging in protected expression. She also noted that because of various exceptions, the tax applied mainly to two companies.
Those businesses, Lamar Advertising and Norton Outdoor Advertising, indicated the tax would require them to remove less profitable billboards, which has the effect of limiting protected speech, Kennedy said.
“That the tax involves billboards rather than the institutional press is of no consequence, and strict scrutiny applies,” Kennedy said.
Cincinnati imposed the tax three years ago to raise $709,000 to help cover a $2.5 million budget shortfall. The city argued unsuccessfully that the tax was only a commercial transaction and didn’t target billboard messages.”
— Cincinnati.com, The Enquirer
Read entire article
by TRC_Admin | Oct 30, 2021 | Billboards, Legal
SCOTUSblog has been maintaining an ongoing list of various proceedings and orders on their site leading up to November 10 argument:
“Whether the Austin city code’s distinction between on-premise signs, which may be digitized, and off-premise signs, which may not, is a facially unconstitutional content-based regulation under Reed v. Town of Gilbert.”
— SCOTUSblog
To track proceedings and orders via SCOTUSblog
by TRC_Admin | Oct 5, 2021 | Billboards, Legal
Photo: Supremecourt.gov
“…In November, the court will hear argument in City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising of Texas, a First Amendment challenge to an Austin regulation that bars some digitized billboards but allows others depending on the billboard’s location. A new petition asks the court to take up another challenge to a city policy that involves differential treatment of signs.
The city of Baltimore taxes the owners of displays that advertise services that occur in a different location, meaning many billboards but not other types of signs. One of the country’s largest billboard-advertising companies challenged the tax under the First Amendment. Applying a relaxed standard, Maryland’s highest court upheld the tax as rationally related to the city’s legitimate interest in raising public revenue. In its petition, the billboard owner, one of four such companies in Baltimore, argues that a heightened standard should apply. The company also argues that Baltimore’s distinction between on-premises signs and off-premises signs is ‘even more problematic’ than the one presented in Austin. The case is Clear Channel Outdoor, LLC v. Raymond.”
— Andrew Hamm, SCOTUSblog
Read entire article
by TRC_Admin | Oct 5, 2021 | Billboards, Legal
Photo: Corrie Schaffeld, Cincinnati Business Courier
“The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a tax that Cincinnati City Council put on billboards violated the First Amendment, nullifying it.
After council approved the tax in 2018 aiming to raise $709,000, it never went into effect while the case wound its way through the courts.
The justices reversed a decision by the Hamilton County Appellate Court made in 2020 upholding the imposition of the tax. The court agreed with former Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Curt Hartman, who also believed the tax was unconstitutional, and his successor on the case, Common Pleas Judge Thomas Heekin.
Billboard companies Lamar Advertising and Norton Outdoor Advertising sued the city two years ago after the 7% tax on outdoor billboards was passed, saying it was unconstitutional based on the First Amendment right to free speech and violated the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause and equal protection clauses. The city had approved the tax in order to balance the fiscal year 2019 budget.
‘Even if the city passed the tax ordinance without a motive to censor billboard operators, the threat of overt censorship, self-censorship, or undetectable censorship created by the tax impermissibly infringes on rights protected by the First Amendment,’ wrote Justice Sharon Kennedy. ‘The city’s billboard tax resembles the type of taxes that were a cause of the American Revolution: taxes that curtail the amount of revenue raised by the press through advertisements and tend to directly restrict the circulation of protected expression.’
The court noted that the city exempted all other types of outdoor advertising — ‘potentially thousands’ — from the tax…””
— Chris Wetterich, Cincinnati Business Courier
Read entire article
by TRC_Admin | May 22, 2021 | City Signs, Codes, Controversial, Legal
Photo: Daniel Sutphin, Sun
“A new Punta Gorda law is in the works that could restrict indecent or obscene language on residential signs and flags — and even a person’s clothes if worn in public places.
‘We get complaints about people putting up — whether it’s a flag or sign or (wearing) apparel, whatever — that has the F word on it,’ said City Council Member Nancy Prafke…
The city began reworking its current sign code in January 2020 due to an abundance of Realtor signs in public areas.
During the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, more issues came to light with residential flags and signs, the amount of them, and even the language some featured that could be deemed as offensive.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the City Council approved the first of two readings of the city’s new ‘Sign Standards’ code that would try to control some of these issues…
With the new code, however, the city plans to restrict offensive language, defining it as ‘fighting words,’ ‘indecent speech’ or ‘obscene.’
The City Council also amended the new code to include apparel should a shirt, hat, or other piece of clothing display language in a public place that could be found to be in violation of those definitions.
‘So, when you’re driving down the street and someone has a sign (with offensive language) in their yard,” said City Manager Greg Murray, “that can be enforceable but if it’s inside a place like Fishermen’s Village (it’s not because) you’re on private property.’
Murray went on to say that if a person was wearing an ‘offensive’ shirt in a public place like the city’s Harborwalk along Charlotte Harbor, they would be in violation of the new code.
What are “fighting words?
In the new code, the city defines this as words or graphics which ‘by their very utterance’ have a direct tendency to incite immediate breach of the peace by the person to whom, individually, the remark is addressed.
Fighting words include, but are not limited to, defamatory remarks made to private citizens; and epithets (or labels) based on the person’s race, color, religion, disability, national origin, ethnicity or sex.
What is ‘indecent speech?’
In the new code, the city defines this as language or graphics that depict or describe sexual or excretory activities or organs in a manner that is offensive as measured by contemporary community standards.
What is ‘obscene’ language?
In the new code, the city defines this as language or graphics that depict or describe sex or sexual organs in a manner appealing to, or intended to appeal to, the average viewer or reader’s visceral sexual (prurient) interests, and taken as a whole, lacks any justification from a political, literary, artistic or scientific value.
What is a sign?
In the new code, a ‘sign’ is defined as any device, structure, item, thing, object, fixture, painting, printed material, or visual image using words, graphics, symbols, numbers, or letters designed or used for the purpose of communicating a message or attracting attention.
City Attorney David Levin told the City Council that this definition could ‘arguably include something being worn.’
Mayor Lynne Matthews thought a more clear definition was needed.
‘We should include something specific about apparel of any kind,’ Matthews said. ‘It needs to be added specifically because anything you leave to subjective opinion goes by the wayside.’
What’s next?
The amended ‘Sign Standards’ ordinance still has to come back before the City Council at a future meeting before anything becomes official.
As far as how the new code will be enforced, Assistant City Manager told The Daily Sun that it is currently ‘under staff review.'”
— Daniel Sutphin, Sun
Read entire article
