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Supreme Court Addresses Municipal Sign Regulations, Again
In the 2015 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Reed v. The Town of Gilbert, 135 S.Ct. 2218 (2015), the Court applied strict scrutiny to a sign regulation, as it related to directional signs placed by a local congregation that held services at different locations each week. In April, 2022 the Court took another look at the issue of strict scrutiny relating to "off-premises" signs. In the case of City of Austin, Texas v. Reagan National Advertising of Austin, LLC, No. 20-1029 (2022), in distinguishing the determination in Reed v. The Town of Gilbert, the majority concluded, in an opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, that strict scrutiny should not apply to determining whether the off-premises sign regulations at issue violated the First Amendment.
The City of Austin regulates signs and specifically regulates signs that are not located at the premises they advertise. The sign code of the City prohibits new off premises signs. Any such signs existing at the time of enactment of the restrictions may remain, may change their message (the face) but may not be changed in any way that increases their nonconformity. It was these provisions which gave rise to the dispute, when Reagan National Advertising sought to digitize off premises signs. There are no similar restrictions on signs that advertise activities located on the premises where the signs are located.
As the Court noted in the City of Austin case, "[o]n-/off-premises distinctions, like the one at issue here, proliferated following the enactment of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 (Act), 23 U.S.C. §131. In the Act, Congress directed States receiving federal highway funding to regulate outdoor signs in proximity to federal highways, in part by limiting off-premises signs…. The City represents, and respondents have not disputed, that 'tens of thousands of municipalities nationwide' have adopted analogous on-/off-premises distinctions in their sign codes."
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