HOLMES BEACH – The city is amending its sign ordinance to ensure compliance with a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that protects free speech, specifically, words on signs.
The City Commission on first reading unanimously voted in favor of the amended sign ordinance drafted by City Attorney Erica Augello and presented by Development Services Director Chad Minor on Nov. 14.
The sign ordinance, last amended in 2007, will be reviewed by the Planning Commission before being brought back to the City Commission for second reading and final adoption.
During the Nov. 14 meeting, Minor said the amended ordinance presented that day represented the culmination of 15 to 20 commission workshops that occurred over the last year to a year and a half.
City Attorney Erica Augello provided a summary of the freedom of speech protections pertaining to signs. – Joe Hendricks | Sun
He said the amended ordinance pertains in part to political signs placed on residential properties being treated similarly to residential “for sale” or “for rent” signs.
In response to a question posed by The Sun, Augello provided a brief summary of the proposed sign ordinance amendments.
“Several years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States made a decision (in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona) that had to do with free speech, commercial speech, political speech and regulating signs. The Supreme Court of the United States says you can’t regulate speech on signs, but you can regulate their size, you can regulate where they’re placed, you can regulate the material they’re made of, but you can’t regulate what’s located on them. Cities throughout the country have been amending their sign codes to make them enforceable and to make sure we are not regulating the content of the signs,” she said.
She also noted commercial speech on signs is not as protected as the personal free speech of individuals.
The 45-page ordinance also includes numerous definitions and regulations pertaining to different types of signs, sign allowances and sign prohibitions.
Amendment specifics
The proposed sign ordinance includes several “whereas” clauses pertaining to free speech protections. One clause notes that one intent of the amended ordinance is to reaffirm that the city’s sign standards and regulations are not designed to censor speech or regulate the viewpoint of the sign’s message.
Another clause notes that until 2015, federal court opinions were not clear as to what constituted content-based sign regulations versus content-neutral sign regulations. That question was clarified in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona case in which the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of a local sign ordinance that had different criteria for different types of temporary, noncommercial signs.
“The city recognizes that in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, the Supreme Court held that content-based regulation is presumptively unconstitutional,” one clause in the Holmes Beach sign ordinance states.
Another clause notes that the case clarified that municipalities still have the authority to enact and enforce reasonable sign regulations that are not content-based, including the regulation of sign size, the locations in which signs may be placed, rules that distinguish between freestanding signs and those attached to buildings, between lighted and unlighted signs, between signs with fixed messages and electronic signs with messages that change, between the placement of signs on private and public property, between the placement of signs on commercial and residential property, between on-premises and off-premises signs, rules restricting the total number of signs allowed per mile of roadway and rules imposing time restrictions on signs advertising a one-time event.
Additional clauses reference several other examples of case law pertaining to sign regulations.
