576 U.S. 155 (2015)
The Town of Gilbert, Arizona, maintains a comprehensive Sign Code that categorizes outdoor signs by the type of information they convey and imposes different restrictions on each category. Ideological signs communicating messages or ideas for noncommercial purposes may be up to 20 square feet and displayed without time limits. Political signs designed to influence elections may be up to 32 square feet and displayed up to 60 days before a primary and 15 days after a general election. Temporary directional signs relating to qualifying events, such as meetings of nonprofit groups, are limited to 6 square feet, may be displayed no more than 12 hours before and 1 hour after the event, and are restricted in placement.
Petitioners Good News Community Church and its pastor Clyde Reed are small nondenominational churches that hold services at various temporary locations in the Town. To advertise their services, the Church posts 15 to 20 temporary signs around the Town early on Saturday mornings displaying the Church name and the time and location of the next service, removing them around midday on Sunday.
The Town's Sign Code compliance manager cited the Church twice for violating the time limits on temporary directional signs and for failing to include an event date on the signs. Town officials confiscated one sign, which Reed retrieved from municipal offices. Reed contacted the compliance department to reach an accommodation, but the manager informed the Church there would be no leniency and promised to punish future violations.
The Churches filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, alleging the Sign Code violated the First Amendment, and sought a preliminary injunction. The District Court denied the motion. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, concluding the Sign Code was content neutral. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Whether the Town of Gilbert's Sign Code is content based on its face?1
Content-based laws target speech based on its communicative content and are presumptively unconstitutional, subject to strict scrutiny unless the government proves they are narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.2
Yes. The Sign Code defines Temporary Directional Signs on the basis of their content by requiring information about the location of and direction to a qualifying event.3 It applies different size, time, and placement rules to ideological signs communicating messages or ideas.4 It also applies different rules to political signs designed to influence elections.5
The distinctions turn on the message conveyed rather than any neutral factor such as location alone.6 A political sign and a temporary directional sign in the same place receive different treatment solely because of the information each communicates.7 The Ninth Circuit's focus on the absence of disagreement with the message skips the required first step of examining whether the law is content based on its face.8
The Sign Code is content based on its face and therefore subject to strict scrutiny.9
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Kennedy And Sotomayor, Jj.
Justice Alito joined the opinion of the Court but added words of caution.10 The decision is narrow and does not invalidate all sign codes.11 It does not invalidate all content-based distinctions.12
It does not call into question precedents permitting regulation of commercial speech.13 It does not prevent governments from enacting content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions.14 It does not prevent governments from imposing content-based restrictions that are narrowly tailored to serve compelling governmental interests such as public safety.15
Whether the Sign Code's distinctions among ideological signs, political signs, and temporary directional signs are based on the message a sign conveys?
A law is content based if it defines regulated speech by particular subject matter or by its function or purpose, and such facial distinctions based on the message a speaker conveys are subject to strict scrutiny.16
Yes. The Sign Code creates three categories whose restrictions depend entirely on the communicative content. Ideological signs receive the most favorable treatment with no time limits and larger size allowances.17 Political signs receive intermediate allowances tied to election periods.18
Temporary directional signs receive the most restrictive limits on size, duration, and placement.19 These categories single out specific subject matter for differential treatment even though they do not target viewpoints within each category.20 The restrictions applied to the Church's signs advertising service times and locations therefore depend on the message those signs convey.21
The Sign Code's distinctions are based on the message a sign conveys and are therefore content based.
Whether the Sign Code's content-based restrictions survive strict scrutiny under the First Amendment?22
To survive strict scrutiny a content-based law must further a compelling governmental interest and be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.23
No. The Town asserted interests in preserving aesthetic appeal and traffic safety. The Sign Code is underinclusive because it allows unlimited larger ideological and political signs while strictly limiting smaller directional signs that create the same aesthetic and safety concerns.24 The Town offered no basis for believing directional signs pose a unique threat.25 Because the Code reaches only some signs that threaten the asserted interests, it fails the narrow-tailoring requirement even assuming the interests qualify as compelling.26
The Sign Code's content-based restrictions do not survive strict scrutiny.27
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Breyer concurred in the judgment.28 He emphasized that content discrimination should not automatically trigger strict scrutiny in every regulatory context.29 He viewed the category as a rule of thumb rather than an automatic trigger.30
He would have examined whether the regulation works disproportionate harm to First Amendment interests in light of the regulatory objectives.31 He noted that the Town's rules violate the First Amendment for the reasons set forth by Justice Kagan.32
Joined by Ginsburg And Breyer, Jj.
Justice Kagan concurred in the judgment while stressing that the decision is narrow.33 It does not call into question commercial-speech precedents or content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions.34 She observed that the Town's distinctions between directional signs and other types lack any sensible basis.35
Those distinctions therefore fail even intermediate scrutiny.36 She concluded that it is unnecessary to decide whether strict scrutiny applies to every sign ordinance containing a subject-matter exemption.37