Opinion ID: 147216
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Constitutionality of the Sign Regulations

Text: Courts have often faced the problem of applying the broad principles of the First Amendment to unique forms of expression.... Each method of communicating ideas is a law unto itself and that law must reflect the differing natures, values, abuses and dangers of each method. We deal here with the law of billboards. Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490, 500-01, 101 S.Ct. 2882, 69 L.Ed.2d 800 (1981) (citations, footnote, and internal quotation marks omitted).
In Central Hudson, the Supreme Court announced a four-part test for assessing the constitutionality of a restriction on commercial speech: (1) if `the communication is neither misleading nor related to unlawful activity,' then it merits First Amendment scrutiny as a threshold matter; in order for the restriction to withstand such scrutiny, (2)'[t]he State must assert a substantial interest to be achieved by restrictions on commercial speech;' (3) `the restriction must directly advance the state interest involved;' and (4) it must not be `more extensive than is necessary to serve that interest.' Metro Lights, L.L.C. v. City of Los Angeles, 551 F.3d 898, 903 (9th Cir.2009) (quoting Cent. Hudson, 447 U.S. at 564-66, 100 S.Ct. 2343), cert. denied ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1014, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2009). [T]he last two steps of the Central Hudson analysis basically involve a consideration of the `fit' between the legislature's ends and the means chosen to accomplish those ends. Rubin v. Coors Brewing Co., 514 U.S. 476, 486, 115 S.Ct. 1585, 131 L.Ed.2d 532 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted). As a general matter, there is no question that restrictions on billboards advance cities' substantial interests in aesthetics and safety. Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 508-10, 101 S.Ct. 2882; Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 904. However, a city may diminish the credibility of [its] rationale for restricting speech in the first place where it exempts some speech from the general restriction. Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 905 (internal quotation marks omitted). The critical question is whether the City denigrates its interest in ... safety and beauty and defeats its own case by permitting freeway facing billboards at the Staples Center and in the Fifteenth Street SUD while forbidding other freeway facing billboards. Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 510-11, 101 S.Ct. 2882. To put it in the context of the Central Hudson test, a regulation may have exceptions that undermine and counteract the interest the government claims it adopted the law to further; such a regulation cannot directly and materially advance its aim, and is, therefore, unconstitutionally underinclusive. Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 905 (quoting Rubin, 514 U.S. at 489, 115 S.Ct. 1585); see also Greater New Orleans Broad. Ass'n, Inc. v. United States, 527 U.S. 173, 190-93, 119 S.Ct. 1923, 144 L.Ed.2d 161 (1999) (a regulation may be unconstitutionally underinclusive if it is so pierced by exceptions and inconsistencies that it cannot advance the government's interest in the regulation). Here, the City's exceptions to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban do not undermine the City's interests in aesthetics and safety. Indeed, the exceptions were made for the express purpose of advancing those very interests. Allowing billboards at the Staples Center was an important element of a project to remove blight and dangerous conditions from downtown Los Angeles. Similarly, the Fifteenth Street SUD was an outgrowth of the City's efforts to improve traffic flow, and thereby safety, on Santa Monica Boulevard. Not only did the agreement to allow signs in the Fifteenth Street SUD advance that project, it also resulted in a net reduction of billboards in the City. Ironically, the most significant denigration to the City's interests in traffic safety and aesthetics might result, not from allowing the freeway facing billboards at the Staples Center and in the Fifteenth Street SUD, but instead from strict adherence to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban, which might have severely hampered, if not completely defeated, both projects. The district court took an all-or-nothing approach to its constitutional analysis of the Freeway Facing Sign Ban, stating that to preserv[e] even one freeway-facing sign ... undermines the City's stated interests in traffic safety and aesthetics. World Wide Rush I, 579 F.Supp.2d at 1328. Our First Amendment jurisprudence, however, contemplates some judicial deference for a municipality's reasonably graduated response to different aspects of a problem. Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 910. As the Supreme Court has explained, It does not follow from the fact that the city has concluded that some commercial interests outweigh its municipal interests in this context that it must give similar weight to all other commercial advertising. Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 512, 101 S.Ct. 2882. Moreover, exceptions to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban must be considered holistically, not in isolation. Again, the Supreme Court has explained, [T]he effect of the challenged restriction on commercial speech ha[s] to be evaluated in the context of the entire regulatory scheme, rather than in isolation. Greater New Orleans, 527 U.S. at 192, 119 S.Ct. 1923; see also Metro Lights, L.L.C., 551 F.3d at 904 ([W]e must look at whether the City's ban advances its interest in its general application, not specifically with respect to Metro Lights.). [E]valuated in the context of the entire regulatory scheme, the challenged exceptions to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban do not render the Ban so pierced by exceptions and inconsistencies as to be unconstitutionally underinclusive. Greater New Orleans, 527 U.S. at 190-92, 119 S.Ct. 1923. The City reasonably may have concluded that, on balance, safer and more attractive thoroughfares would result from renovations to Santa Monica Boulevard and a reduction in the City's total number of billboards, even if this required installation of some freeway facing billboards along Fifteenth Street. The City also reasonably may have concluded that the benefits of redeveloping and attracting people to an otherwise dangerous and blighted downtown area outweighed the harm of additional freeway facing billboards restricted to that area. See, e.g., Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 911 (even with some exceptions, sign ban went a long way toward cleaning up the clutter, which the City believed to be a worthy legislative goal). In concluding otherwise, the district court relied on the Supreme Court's decision in Greater New Orleans. There, the Court concluded that a federal regulation prohibiting advertisements for gambling in private casinos but allowing advertisements for gambling on reservations violated the First Amendment. Greater New Orleans, 527 U.S. at 177-79, 119 S.Ct. 1923. Greater New Orleans is inapposite, however, because the regulatory distinction between the two types of casinos counteracted the government's purported interest in minimizing gambling. As the Greater New Orleans Court explained, allowing one type of advertising while prohibiting the other would merely channel gamblers to the reservations, thus rendering the regulation squarely at odds with the governmental interests asserted in this case. Id. The Freeway Facing Sign Ban is not a means by which the evil sought to be prohibited is simply channeled elsewhere, at odds with the asserted governmental interests. Rather, the City submitted a convincing rationalewhich is entirely consistent with its asserted governmental interestfor exempting some freeway facing signs from its Ban. The other cases upon which WWR relies are similarly inapposite. In each of those cases, the government created a distinction between permissible and prohibited forms of commercial speech, and, in each case, the distinction undermined the government's asserted interests in the regulation as a whole. See Rubin, 514 U.S. at 489, 115 S.Ct. 1585 (There is little chance that § 205(e)(2) can directly and materially advance its aim, while other provisions of the same Act directly undermine and counteract its effects.); City of Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 507 U.S. 410, 417-18, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993) (no reasonable fit between government interests and regulation which required removal of 62 newsracks but allowed 1,500 to 2,000 to remain); Ballen v. City of Redmond, 466 F.3d 736, 743 (9th Cir.2006) (exceptions to sign ban compromise the City's interests in traffic safety and aesthetics). Here, by contrast, the City permitted billboards at the Staples Center and in the Fifteenth Street SUD precisely because of its interests in safety and aesthetics. In addition, the exceptions to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban are content-neutral, whereas the distinctions employed in Greater New Orleans (private casinos versus reservation casinos), Rubin (beer labels versus wine labels), Discovery Network (commercial newsracks versus non-commercial newsracks), and Ballen (content-based exceptions to ban) implicated the messages communicated by the signs at issue. See Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 904-05 ([A] regulation can be unconstitutional if it in effect restricts too little speech because its exemptions discriminate on the basis of the signs' messages.) (internal quotation marks omitted); Ballen, 466 F.3d at 743 ([T]he City's use of a content-based ban rather than a valid time, place, or manner restriction indicates that the City has not carefully calculated the costs and benefits associated with the burden on speech imposed by its discriminatory, content-based prohibition.). Our recent decision in Metro Lights, in which we rejected a Central Hudson challenge to an LAMC provision banning off-site signs generally, but permitting them on bus shelters, is more analogous. [2] Metro Lights, 551 F.3d at 900-01. Relying on Metromedia, we approved the City's justification for the bus shelter advertisement exception that proliferation of offsite advertising by numerous and disparate private parties creates more distracting ugliness than a single, controlled series of advertisements on city property over which the City wields contractual supervision. Id. at 910. We concluded that the specific exception in question here does not weaken the direct link between the City's objectives and its general prohibition of offsite advertising. Id.; see also Outdoor Sys., Inc. v. City of Mesa, 997 F.2d 604, 611 (9th Cir.1993) ([T]here is a reasonable fit between the sign codes and the interests they seek to achieve.); Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. v. City of New York, 594 F.3d 94, 110 (2d Cir.2010) (The City may legitimately allow limited and controlled advertising on street furniture, while also reducing clutter on City sidewalks. Allowing some signs does not constitutionally require a city to allow all similar signs.). Here, as in Metro Lights, the City's decision to permit some freeway facing billboards at the Staples Center and in the Fifteenth Street SUD does not break the link between the Freeway Facing Sign Ban and the City's objectives in traffic safety and aesthetics.
Under the prior restraint doctrine, a law cannot condition the free exercise of First Amendment rights on the unbridled discretion of government officials. Desert Outdoor Adver. v. City of Moreno Valley, 103 F.3d 814, 818 (9th Cir.1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). Regulations must contain narrow, objective, and definite standards to guide the licensing authority and must require the official to provide an explanation for his decision. Long Beach Area Peace Network v. City of Long Beach, 574 F.3d 1011, 1025 (9th Cir.2009) (internal quotation marks, citations, and alterations omitted); see also Seattle Affiliate of the Oct. 22nd Coal. to Stop Police Brutality v. City of Seattle, 550 F.3d 788, 798 (9th Cir.2008) (ordinance must have narrowly drawn, reasonable and definite standards that guide the hand of the administrator). The district court concluded that the Supergraphic and Off-Site Sign Bans were unconstitutional prior restraints on speech because their exceptions impermissibly vest the City Council with unbridled discretion to select among speakers on the basis of content. This legal conclusion was erroneous, however, because the prior restraint doctrine does not apply to the legislative function at issue here. The exceptions to the Supergraphic and Off-Site Sign Bans are rooted in the City Council's legislative discretion, not its discretion to make executive decisions as part of the LAMC's regulatory scheme. This distinction makes all the difference. Unbridled discretion challenges typically arise when discretion is delegated to an administrator, police officer, or other executive official, as opposed to a legislative body. Long Beach Area Peace Network, 574 F.3d at 1042; see, e.g., Thomas v. Chi. Park Dist., 534 U.S. 316, 319-20, 122 S.Ct. 775, 151 L.Ed.2d 783 (2002) (superintendent of park district); City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publ'g Co., 486 U.S. 750, 753, 108 S.Ct. 2138, 100 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988) (mayor); Outdoor Media Group, Inc. v. City of Beaumont, 506 F.3d 896, 904 (9th Cir.2007) (planning director); G.K. Ltd. Travel, 436 F.3d at 1082 (permitting official); Desert Outdoor Adver., 103 F.3d at 818-19 (city official). In rare circumstances, however, a legislative body's reservation of authority could constitute an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. As we recently explained: [W]here a legislative body has enacted a permitting scheme for expressive conduct but has reserved some decisionmaking authority for itself under that scheme, that reserved authority is vulnerable to challenge on grounds of unbridled discretion. Long Beach Area Peace Network, 574 F.3d at 1042. The First Amendment requires standards to cabin the legislative body's authority to execute aspects of the regulatory scheme in such circumstances because that authority is distinct from the general discretion a legislative body has to enact (or not enact) laws. Id. This is not that rare circumstance in which the legislative body created a licensing power and reserved it for itself. The City Council's authority to enact special plans, create SUDS, or enter into development agreements derives from its regular and well-recognized legislative power to regulate land use. It does not depend upon or derive from the Supergraphic and Off-Site Sign Bans. The City Council would have the power to employ any of those land use tools even if none was ever mentioned in the Bans; the Bans do no more than affirm the existence of these legislative powers. The First Amendment is not implicated by the City Council's exercise of legislative judgment in these circumstances. Our recent decision in Long Beach Area Peace Network is illustrative. There, the city enacted a regulatory scheme by which permits would be issued for certain gatherings in public places. See Long Beach Area Peace Network, 574 F.3d at 1025-26. The city council retained the ability to waive permit fees, but the ordinance did not provide standards to cabin the council's exercise of that authority. Id. at 1041. The ordinance was subject to attack under the prior restraint doctrine because the city council's authority was unlike its usual legislative authority. Id. at 1042. Instead, that authority derived exclusively from the permitting scheme: Absent a preexisting permitting scheme, a city council could not in advance impose service charges or other fees on a group seeking to hold a demonstration in a public forum. Id. Here, by contrast, the City Council does have the authority to employ specific plans, SUDs, and development agreements absent the Supergraphic and Off-Site Sign Bans. Because the prior restraint doctrine does not require the City to restrict the general discretion a legislative body has to enact (or not enact) laws, the district court erred in concluding that the Supergraphic and Off-Site Sign Bans are unconstitutional prior restraints on speech. Id.