Source: http://lawsdocbox.com/US_Government_Resources/69010936-Supreme-court-of-the-united-states.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 12:02:59+00:00

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4 i QUESTION PRESENTED Is a sign ordinance that regulates the size, location, and permissible duration of posting based on the message a sign conveys a content-based regulation under the first amendment?
9 2 tive as scholars who have no connection with either party can be of help to this Court in evaluating the Petition for Certiorari. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT The speech restriction in this case, which distinguishes (1) signs support[ing] candidates or relating to any other matter on the ballot, (2) sign[s] communicating a message or ideas, and (3) signs related to noncommercial event[s], is facially content-based. It may well not turn on the viewpoint of speech, or be motivated by legislative disagreement with certain ideas. Yet many precedents from this Court have made clear that such content classifications make a law content-based, even in the absence of improper legislative motive. Nonetheless, the Ninth Circuit panel majority in this case treated this content-based law as contentneutral, and in the process exacerbated a three-way split among eight circuits. Some circuit court decisions, including the decision below, seem to be focusing on occasional remarks in this Court s cases about the importance of whether speech was restricted because of legislative hostility to its message. But those decisions are ignoring the many precedents from this Court striking down content-based laws regardless of the absence of any such hostility. This Court ought to grant certiorari to resolve this split, and to reaffirm make a monetary contribution to the preparation or submission of this brief. The parties counsel of record received timely notice of the intent to file the brief under Rule 37. Petitioners have consented to this filing, but respondents have not.
11 4 point-neutral. 2 Yet this Court has repeatedly made clear that laws distinguishing speech based on content specifically including laws distinguishing campaign-related speech from other speech are contentbased even if they are viewpoint-neutral and not prompted by any motive to suppress particular ideas. Thus, for example, in McIntyre v. Ohio Elec. Comm n, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), this Court held that a law requiring campaign literature to be signed was content-based. Part of the reason was that the category of covered documents is defined by their content only those publications containing speech designed to influence the voters in an election need bear the required markings. Id. at 345. This was so even though [the] provision applie[d] evenhandedly to advocates of differing viewpoints. Id. And because of this content discrimination, the law was subject not to intermediate scrutiny, but to exacting scrutiny. 2 See Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 587 F.3d 966, 975 (9th Cir. 2009) ( Nothing in the regulation suggests any intention by Gilbert to suppress certain ideas through the Sign Code, nor does Good News claim that Gilbert had any illicit motive in adopting the ordinance. ); Pet. 2a (treating the 2009 decision as law of the case); Pet. 65a (viewing the proper test as turning on whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of disagreement with the message it conveys (quotation marks and citations omitted)); Pet. 29a ( Gilbert s Sign Code places no restrictions on the particular viewpoints of any person or entity that seeks to erect a Temporary Directional Sign ); Pet. 32a ( Because Gilbert s Sign Code places no restrictions on the particular viewpoints of any person or entity that seeks to erect a Temporary Directional Sign and the exemption applies to all, it is content-neutral as that term has been defined by the Supreme Court. ).
12 5 Id. at 346 (internal quotation marks omitted). Likewise, in this case the category of specially treated signs is defined by their content only those [signs] containing speech designed to influence the voters in an election may be over 20 square feet in area. Similarly, in Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191 (1992), this Court treated a restriction on electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place as contentbased: Whether individuals may exercise their free speech rights near polling places depends entirely on whether their speech is related to a political campaign. * * * This Court has held that the First Amendment s hostility to content-based regulation extends not only to a restriction on a particular viewpoint, but also to a prohibition of public discussion of an entire topic. Id. at 197 (plurality opinion); see also id. at 214 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment) (agreeing that the law was content based ); id. at 217 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (stating that the law regulates expression based on its content ). 3 Likewise, in this case, whether individuals may exercise their free speech rights [using large signs] 3 Though the law was ultimately upheld by this Court, all the Justices agreed it was content-based. The plurality and the dissent agreed the proper test was strict scrutiny, because the law was based on the content of speech. 504 U.S. at 214, 217. Justice Scalia s concurrence treated the law as a permissible regulation of speech in a nonpublic forum, but agreed that it was content-based. Id. at 214.
16 9 and Carey v. Brown, 447 U.S. 455 (1980), this Court viewed as content-based restrictions that banned all picketing in certain places (near schools and residences, respectively), but exempted labor picketing. Those restrictions were doubtless not motivated by hostility to all non-labor-picketing views. Nonetheless, because they distinguished speech based on content, they were treated as content-based. 408 U.S. at 99; 447 U.S. at 460. To be sure, this Court has at times treated as content-neutral laws that are seen as focusing on the secondary effects of speech. See City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books, Inc., 535 U.S. 425, (2002) (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment) (discussing this doctrine). But political signs, ideological signs, and event signs are no different in any of their possible secondary effects. In this respect, this case is just like Discovery Network (though involving fully protected speech, not just commercial speech). In Discovery Network, this Court noted that, [i]n contrast to the speech at issue in [City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc.], there are no secondary effects attributable to respondent publishers newsracks that distinguish them from the newsracks Cincinnati permits to remain on its sidewalks. Discovery Network, 507 U.S. at 430. Likewise, there are no secondary effects attributable to Reed s signs promoting religious events that distinguish them from the political signs that the Town of Gilbert allows to be much larger. The distinction between content-based and content-neutral restrictions has emerged as one of the most important rules of First Amendment law.
17 10 See, e.g., Elena Kagan, Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine, 63 U. Chi. L. Rev. 413, 443 (1996); Leslie Kendrick, Content Discrimination Revisited, 98 Va. L. Rev. 231, 237 (2012); Seth F. Kreimer, Good Enough for Government Work: Two Cheers for Content Neutrality, papers.ssrn. com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id= (University of Pennsylvania Law School working paper); Geoffrey R. Stone, Content Regulation and the First Amendment, 25 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 189 (1983); James Weinstein, How Theory Matters: A Commentary on Robert Sedler s The Law of the First Amendment Revisited, 58 Wayne L. Rev. 1105, 1139 (2013). And this Court has repeatedly stressed to lower courts the significance of this distinction. Yet the decision below, alongside many other circuit court opinions, calls content-neutral that which is indubitably content-based. See Pet. 50a (Watford, J., dissenting). Those circuit courts have picked up on some remarks in this Court s jurisprudence that might seem to call for an inquiry into legislative motivation. See, e.g., Pet. 30a (focusing on whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of disagreement with the message it conveys ) (citing Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 719 (2000), and Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791 (1989)). But those courts have failed to apply the many precedents from this Court cited above, precedents that Hill and Ward were obviously not seeking to overturn. This Court should grant certiorari in this case, to clarify the content discrimination standard both for sign cases and for free speech cases more broadly.
Case :0-cv-0-KJM-CKD Document Filed 0//0 Page of 0 EDMUND G. BROWN JR., State Bar No. 00 Attorney General of California STEPHEN P. ACQUISTO, State Bar No. Supervising Deputy Attorney General ANTHONY R.
No IN THE. Petitioners, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, Respondent.
No IN THE. STOLT-NIELSEN S.A. ET AL. Petitioner, ANIMALFEEDS INTERNATIONAL CORP., Respondent.

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