In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 16-3055

LEIBUNDGUTH STORAGE & VAN SERVICE, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

VILLAGE OF DOWNERS GROVE, ILLINOIS,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 14 C 9851 — Edmond E. Chang, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED MARCH 27, 2017 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

____________________

Before BAUER and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges, and 

DEGUILIO, District Judge.

*

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. An ordinance in Downers 

Grove, Illinois, limits the size and location of signs. Leibundguth Storage & Van Service contends that this ordinance violates the First Amendment to the Constitution (ap-

* Of the Northern District of Indiana, sitting by designation.
2 No. 16-3055

plied to the states by the Fourteenth) because it is riddled 

with exceptions and therefore is a form of content discrimination that the Village has not justified. See Reed v. Gilbert, 

135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015). But because the principal topic of the 

ordinance is commercial speech, the district court concluded 

that Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service 

Commission, 447 U.S. 557 (1980), rather than Reed supplies the 

rule of decision, and it found the ordinance valid. 150 F. 

Supp. 3d 910 (N.D. Ill. 2015). We conclude that, whether or 

not Reed applies, this does not do Leibundguth any good because it is not affected by the problematic exceptions.

Downers Grove has a comprehensive ordinance regulating signs. Section 9.020 sets out rules for all signs, including 

a rule prohibiting “any sign painted directly on a wall” 

(§9.020.P). Section 9.050.A sets a size limit: for buildings such 

as Leibundguth’s, which are closer than 300 feet to a street, 

the maximum is 1.5 square feet per linear foot of frontage—

which implies a limit of 159 square feet for Leibundguth’s 

building. Section 9.050.C.1 provides that each business may 

have only one sign, though an amendment in 2015 allows

businesses that face both a street and a railroad an extra sign 

on the railroad side. Section 9.030 creates exceptions: the ordinance does not require permits for holiday decorations 

(§9.030.D), temporary signs for personal events such as 

birthdays (§9.030.E), “[n]oncommercial flags” (§9.030.G)

(flags can be used to send political messages), political and 

noncommercial signs that do not exceed 12 square feet 

(§9.030.I), “[m]emorial signs and tablets” (§9.030.K), and 

about a dozen more. These exclusions set up Leibundguth’s 

argument that the ordinance represents content discrimination prohibited by Reed.
No. 16-3055 3

The Village insists that the ordinance regulates commercial speech only. We need not decide which decision—Reed

or Central Hudson—must give way when a commercial-sign 

law includes content discrimination. (One circuit recently 

held that Reed supersedes Central Hudson. See Thomas v. 

Bright, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 27364 (6th Cir. Sept. 11, 2019).)

This ordinance is comprehensive. Section 9.010.B tells us so: 

“The regulations of this article apply to all signs in the village, unless otherwise expressly stated.” And if that were not 

clear enough, the exceptions are revealing. Why exclude 

modestly sized political signs (§9.030.I) from the permit requirement unless they are included for other purposes?

Suppose we were to hold that commercial signs must be 

treated the same as flags and political signs. Leibundguth’s 

problems come from the ordinance’s size and surface limits, 

not from any content distinctions. One of Leibundguth’s 

signs is painted on a wall; another is too large; a third wall 

has two signs (as the Village counts them); and the size of 

these signs, conceded to exceed 500 square feet, vastly exceeds the limit of 159 square feet for Leibundguth’s building 

(and the limit of 12 square feet for political signs).

Let us start with the largest of Leibundguth’s signs, 

which faces the railroad tracks—and which Leibundguth

tells us leads to as much as 20% of its revenue, by appealing 

to commuters who see the sign when going to and from 

work.
4 No. 16-3055

This sign is 40 feet long and 10 feet high, or 400 square feet. 

It is painted on a brick wall. The ordinance’s size limit and 

no-paint-on-walls rules independently forbid this sign. It 

would fare no berer if it were a flag or carried a political 

message. It exceeds 12 square feet, so it would not be saved 

by §9.030.I. And the exemptions for flags (§9.030.G) and political signs pertain only to the permit requirement; they do 

not exempt flags or political signs from §9.020.P, which bars 

signs painted on walls. Likewise with the exception for temporary signs (§9.030.E)—not that “temporary” is a form of 

content discrimination in the first place. Anyway, Leibundguth does not want to use temporary signs.

Leibundguth insists that the exclusions in §9.030 remove 

the size and no-paint-on-walls rules for flags and other listed 

subjects. But that’s not what §9.030 itself says. It begins by 

stating that the excluded signs do not require permits; it 

does not say that rules for all signs stated elsewhere in the 

ordinance drop out. Section 9.010.B says that all of the ordinance’s rules apply to all signs unless they are “expressly”

excluded; §9.030 does not expressly remove any signs from 
No. 16-3055 5

the size and no-paint-on-walls rules. Leibundguth’s argument rests on a report prepared by a Village official suggesting that the ordinance does not prohibit purely decorative 

murals and flags. But the Village itself disclaims this nontextual reading. The Village’s understanding of its own ordinance carries the day, see Forsyth County v. Nationalist 

Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 131 (1992), in the absence of some 

indication that it has enforced the ordinance in a way that 

permits large political signs or flags painted on walls. See 

Construction & General Laborers Union v. Grand Chute, 915 

F.3d 1120 (7th Cir. 2019). And Leibundguth has not offered 

any evidence that the Village has enforced the ordinance as

Leibundguth reads it, rather than as how the Village tells us 

the ordinance works.

A limit on the size and presentation of signs is a standard 

time, place, and manner rule, a form of aesthetic zoning. The 

Supreme Court has told us that aesthetic limits on signs are 

compatible with the First Amendment. Members of City 

Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 810–12 (1984). 

Like other time, place, and manner restrictions, an aesthetic 

rule must serve its ends; it cannot be arbitrary. The rule must 

be justified without reference to the content or viewpoint of 

speech, must serve a significant government interest, and 

must leave open ample channels for communication. See 

Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293 

(1984).

As the district court explained, 150 F. Supp. 3d at 922–24, 

the Village gathered evidence that signs painted on walls 

tend to deteriorate faster than other signs (Leibundguth’s 

own sign is full of chipped paint and flaking bricks) and, 

when revised or painted over, can become downright ugly. 
6 No. 16-3055

Old paint may show through; efforts to remove paint may 

leave a ghost image or bleach the brick so that the building 

becomes morled. Leibundguth tells us that those effects are 

too slight to justify legislation, but de gustibus non disputandum est. (“There’s no accounting for taste.”) People’s aesthetic reactions are what they are; if a large number of people find paint-on-brick ugly, and paint-over-paint-on-brick 

worse, this is a raw fact that a governmental body may consider. It need not try to prove that aesthetic judgments are 

right.

Likewise with size. Many people view signs as a necessary evil and believe that smaller = less evil. Unless the government has engaged in content or viewpoint discrimination, that aesthetic judgment supports legislation. The Village’s ordinance contains content discrimination, but as we 

have explained that discrimination does not aggrieve Leibundguth. And the parties agree that enforcement of the 

sign ordinance leaves open plenty of ways to communicate. 

Advertising does not depend on applying paint to brick—

and although 159 square feet of signage on Leibundguth’s 

building is less than it prefers to use, 159 square feet is still a 

large sign. Leibundguth also is free to advertise in print or 

over the Internet.

The parties dispute how the Village’s ordinance applies 

to the signs on two other faces of Leibundguth’s building, 

but none of the possibilities poses a constitutional issue distinct from the ones we have already addressed. What we 

have said is enough to show that the ordinance, as applied to 

Leibundguth, does not violate the First Amendment.

AFFIRMED