Opinion ID: 218050
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Plaintiff's Equal Protection Claims

Text: Recognizing the barriers now erected for its Amendment claims, Plaintiff argues that it still can pursue an as-applied equal protection claim, albeit resting on Central Hudson. Because Plaintiff is not a member of a suspect class, its equal protection claim is subject to rational basis review unless its fundamental right of free speech is implicated. See Rubin v. City of Santa Monica, 308 F.3d 1008, 1019 (9th Cir. 2002). Plaintiff does not contend that the City's regulations fail rational basis review, so the dispositive issue is whether Plaintiff has demonstrated a violation of its speech rights. Plaintiff is correct that World Wide Rush did not address an as-applied Central Hudson challenge to the City's offsite and supergraphic sign bans. See 606 F.3d at 687-88. It now attempts to mount that as-applied challenge on three grounds: (1) no tolerable distinction exists between approved supergraphic signs and Plaintiff's prohibited supergraphic signs; (2) no tolerable distinction exists between approved offsite signs and Plaintiff's prohibited offsite signs; and (3) no tolerable distinction exists between permitted onsite signs and Plaintiff's prohibited offsite signs. These claims lack merit under World Wide Rush and Metro Lights.
Plaintiff argues that the City impermissibly distinguishes between its supergraphic signs (which are prohibited) and identical supergraphic signs elsewhere in the City (which are permitted). Plaintiff admits, however, that the permitted supergraphic signs are located within City-created Signage Supplemental Use Districts or other special property development projects, and its own signs are not. Because all the supergraphic signs to which Plaintiff points to substantiate this claim are located within SUDs or approved through special property development projects, Plaintiff's claim fails. In World Wide Rush, the Ninth Circuit rejected an unfettered discretion challenge to the exceptions in the sign ordinance that allowed the City to create SUDs, to enact special plans, and enter into development agreements because those exceptions derived from the City's regular and well-organized legislative power to regulate land use. 606 F.3d at 688. In turn, Metro Lights explained that if an exception itself it permissible, [i]t would be strange, then, if the prohibition suddenly violated the Constitution because the municipality made use of such an exception. 551 F.3d at 909 n. 12. The court wondered: How can it be constitutional to make an exception to a law, but unconstitutional for the exception to operate in practice? Id. If the City can validly enact SUDs to permit signs, then certainly it may constitutionally permit sign owners to erect signs in those districts without running a foul of Central Hudson. And Plaintiff's conclusory argument that the City arbitrarily draws the lines to create SUDs cannot save this claim, as the City's line-drawing is assuredly a classically legislative function within the meaning of both Metro Lights and World Wide Rush. Moreover, the creation of SUDs is indistinguishable from the entering of a contract over advertising at transit stops, as in Metro Lights, as both involve the City's discretion to take a measured legislative response to sign proliferation. Therefore, Plaintiff has not raised even serious questions that its speech rights were violated if the City allows supergraphics in SUDs, while prohibiting Plaintiff's sign located outside of SUDs.
In contrast to its challenge to the supergraphic sign ban, Plaintiff points to offsite signs not within any SUDs that have allegedly been permitted by the City, even though Plaintiff claims they should have been prohibited just as their own offsite signs were. Plaintiff submits photographs of three offsite supergraphic signs it claims should not be permitted under the sign ban: signs on the Westwood Medical Plaza Building (Anderson Decl., Exs. 25-29); signs a top the Wilshire La Brea Building (Anderson Decl., Ex. 24); and signs on the outer walls of the Beverly Center (Anderson Decl., Ex. 31). Plaintiff buttresses this showing by submitting photographs of seven mural signs, which Plaintiff claims are actually signs that pose precisely the same risks as supergraphic signs, but were permitted anyway. (Anderson Decl., Exs. 37-44, Anderson Supp. Decl., Exs. 6-16.) The City researched these signs and provided evidence that all of them had some sort of permits, most of which predated the current supergraphic sign ban enacted in 2002. (Zamparini Decl. ¶¶ 3-4, Exs. 1-10.) Plaintiff quibbles with this evidence, claiming that, among other points, the current signs are not the types of signs that were originally permitted and that some of the signs were permitted under old regulations that would have prohibited the signs at the time. [2] This claim fails for multiple reasons. First, as an evidentiary matter, the City has demonstrated that Plaintiff's sign are different from the signs to which Plaintiff points, as those signs were permitted and most of them predated the offsite sign ban, while Plaintiff's were not permitted and did not predate the ban. The City is certainly entitled to treat signs permitted before the offsite and supergraphic sign bans differently than other signs both because preserving legally nonconforming billboards still `furthers the [City's] significant interest in reducing blight and increasing traffic safety,' even if all billboards are not eliminated, and because the City may have to pay the owners to take legal nonconforming billboards down. See Maldonado v. Morales, 556 F.3d 1037, 1048 (9th Cir.2009) (rejecting equal protection claim of billboard owner on this ground). Second, to implicate the First Amendment in an underinclusivity claim, Plaintiff must demonstrate that, when `evaluated in the context of the entire regulatory scheme,' the ban on signs is so pierced by exceptions and inconsistencies, as to be unconstitutionally underinclusive. World Wide Rush, 606 F.3d at 686. Plaintiff's showing comes nowhere close to meeting this standard. Even if Plaintiff's evidence could create an inference of discrimination at the ten locations cited, Plaintiff has pointed to only ten locations in a City of thousands of billboards. The City could have validly chosen to permit these signs because they improved urban blight in the area (as with Hotel Figueroa) or were consistent with the commercial character of the location (as with the Beverly Center), which simply represents the City's judgment that its interests in allowing (but controlling) the posting of signs in these places outweighs the City's interests in traffic safety and aesthetics. If neither allowing thousands of signs at transit stops, as in Metro Lights, nor channeling signs from one part of the City to another to reduce signage, as in World Wide Rush, undermines the City's interest in reducing sign proliferation, then the ten signs to which Plaintiff points likewise do not implicate Central Hudson. To paraphrase World Wide Rush, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this handful of exceptions break[s] the link between the [offsite] Sign Ban and the City's objectives in traffic safety and aesthetics. Id. at 687. Plaintiff has failed to raise serious questions on this claim.
Plaintiff further argues that the City's distinction between Plaintiff's prohibited offsite signs and permitted onsite signs violates Plaintiff's rights. The distinction between offsite and onsite signs has been repeatedly upheld as content-neutral and valid. See Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 511, 101 S.Ct. 2882; Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 340 F.3d 810, 813 (9th Cir.2003) (The Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, and many other courts have held that the on-site/off-site distinction is not an impermissible content-based regulation.). Plaintiff relies on Foti v. Menlo Park, 146 F.3d 629, 636 (9th Cir. 1998), and Ballen v. City of Redmond, 466 F.3d 736, 744 (9th Cir.2006), to suggest that the onsite/offsite distinction in the area of supergraphic and offsite signs must be considered content-based. However, Foti predated Clear Channel and Ballen, both of which reaffirmed the Supreme Court's decision in Metromedia that the distinction is not, in fact, content-based. To the extent Plaintiff has relied on comments in Ballen that Metromedia's offsite/onsite distinction was unique to the law of fixed billboards, the court in Metro Lights had no trouble applying Metromedia to the City's offsite sign ban and the court in World Wide Rush had no trouble applying Metromedia to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban, and both courts rejected the application of Ballen in this context. Therefore, Plaintiff has not demonstrated serious questions on this claim.
Plaintiff further argues that the City's concern about the safety of supergraphic signs is merely a guise for favoring some speakers over others: Vanguard has demonstrated that there is simply no logical reason to conclude that the same supergraphics appearing outside a City-carved SUD are more dangerous (or more distracting) that similarly situated supergraphic signs that are found within an SUD. (Mot. 25.) Of course, this contention fails for the same reason Plaintiff's challenge to the City's supergraphic sign ban fails, that is, because the City is permitted to create SUDs, the act of allowing billboards in SUDs also passes constitutional muster. Nevertheless, Plaintiff appears to be mounting an attack on the City's enforcement of safety rules directly related to the civil and criminal actions against Plaintiff in state court. To be frank, most of Plaintiffs arguments in support of this point are inscrutable. From what the Court can glean, Plaintiff offers only five photographs of signs it claims are violating the same safety rules it has been cited for, but that have not also been cited. (Anderson Decl., Exs. 8-9, 13, 19-20.) Beyond that, Plaintiff appears to be attempting to litigate in this Court the safety issues involved in the state-court proceeding. The Court declines to wade into that dispute and finds that Plaintiff has not demonstrated that the City's safety enforcement record against other sign companies demonstrates a pretext for discrimination against Plaintiff for exercising its speech rights. At most, the City may not be enforcing the safety regulations against all sign companies at all times, but that alone does not create an inference of invidious discrimination. Town of Atherton v. Templeton, 198 Cal.App.2d 146, 155, 17 Cal. Rptr. 680 (Ct.App.1961) (laxity of enforcement alone is insufficient to demonstrate a violation of equal protection); see also People ex rel. Dept. of Pub. Works v. Golden Rule Church Ass'n, 49 Cal.App.3d 773, 777, 122 Cal.Rptr. 596 (Ct.App.1975) (rejecting billboard owner's discriminatory enforcement argument because, [e]ven if it were assumed that other known violators have not been prosecuted, this factor alone would not establish the existence of illegal discrimination.). Plaintiff has not raised serious questions on this claim.