City Of Autin, Texas v. Reagan National Advertising Of Texas

142 S. Ct. 1464 (2022)

Purchase the Printed Copy at bsmsphd.com

Nature of the Case

To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.

Facts

D regulates signs that advertise things that are not located on the same premises as the sign, as well as signs that direct people to offsite locations. These are known as off-premises signs, and they include, most notably, billboards. Federal, state, and local governments have long distinguished between signs (such as billboards) that promote ideas, products, or services located elsewhere and those that promote or identify things located onsite. On-/off-premises distinctions proliferated following the enactment of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 (Act), 23 U. S. C. §131. The Act directed States receiving federal highway funding to regulate outdoor signs in proximity to federal highways. Approximately two-thirds of States have implemented similar on-/off-premises distinctions. D distinguishes between on-premises and off-premises signs in its sign code in order to “protect the aesthetic value of the city and to protect public safety.” D’s sign code defined the term “off-premise sign” to mean “a sign advertising a business, person, activity, goods, products, or services not located on the site where the sign is installed, or that directs persons to any location not on that site.” The code prohibited the construction of any new off-premises signs, but allowed existing off-premises signs to remain as grandfathered “non-conforming signs.” Non-conforming signs. could not “increase the degree of the existing nonconformity,” “change the method or technology used to convey a message,” or “increase the illumination of the sign.” The code permitted the digitization of on-premises signs. Ps are outdoor-advertising companies that own billboards in Austin. Reagan (Ps) sought permits from D to digitize some of its off-premises billboards. D denied the applications. Ps filed suit against the City in state court alleging that the code’s prohibition against digitizing off-premises signs, but not on-premises signs, violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. D removed the case to federal court. The District Court entered judgment in favor of D. The court held that the challenged sign code provisions were content-neutral under Reed v. Town of Gilbert. The court found “no evidence in the record” that the City had applied the sign code provisions “differently for different messages or speakers” or that its stated concern for esthetics and safety was “pretext for any other purpose.” The court reviewed the on-/off-premises distinction under the standard of intermediate scrutiny applicable to content-neutral regulations of speech. The Court of Appeals reversed. It reasoned that “the fact that a government official has to read a sign’s message to determine the sign’s purpose is enough to” render a regulation content based and “subject it to strict scrutiny.” Under strict scrutiny, the court held that D’s justifications for the distinction could not meet that standard, rendering it unconstitutional. D appealed.