Opinion ID: 218050
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Metro Lights

Text: Metro Lights involved a Central Hudson underinclusivity attack on the City's ban on offsite signs that exempted signs at transit stops and allowed the City to enter a contract with a sign company to install thousand of signs at transit stops. 551 F.3d at 901. Because the parties did not dispute that the advertising was lawful and that the City had substantial interests in traffic safety and aesthetics that supported the offsite sign ban, the court analyzed the challenge under Central Hudson's third and fourth elements, namely, whether the City's restriction `directly advances' the government interest and whether the City's restriction is narrowly tailored to its aim. Id. at 904. The court answered both questions affirmatively. With respect to advancing the City's interest, the court noted that the inquiry must focus on whether the City's ban advances its interest in its general application, not specifically with respect to Metro Lights. Id. It recognized that a ban may be unconstitutionally underinclusive under Central Hudson when it has exceptions that `undermine and counteract' the interest the government claims it adopted the law to further because such a regulation cannot `directly and materially advance its aim.' Id. at 905. The court then interpreted the Supreme Court's underinclusivity decision in Greater New Orleans and other cases to bar regulations in two situations: (1) first, if the exception ensures that the regulation will fail to achieve its end, it does not materially advance its aim; and (2) second, exceptions that make distinctions among different kinds or speech must relate to the interest the government seeks to advance. Id. And the fourth Central Hudson element of narrow tailoring does not demand that the government use the least restrictive means to further its ends. Id. at 906. The court undertook a lengthy analysis of the Supreme Court's decision in Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490, 101 S.Ct. 2882, 69 L.Ed.2d 800 (1981), which upheld a ban on offsite commercial billboards, and found it dispositive on the third element under Central Hudson. Id. at 907-11. Importantly, both Metromedia and Metro Lights emphasized deference to the reasonable judgement of City officials to value one type of commercial advertisingonsite signsover another type of commercial advertisingoffsite signs; indeed, the court in Metro Lights explained that Metromedia exudes deference for a municipality's reasonably graduated response to different aspects of a problem. Id. at 907-08, 910. The court concluded that the contract between the City and the sign provider that allowed thousands of sign at transit stops did not fatally undermine the City's interests in traffic safety and aesthetics for several reasons: first, the sign ban still achieved its aim to reduce signage in the city, id. at 910; second, the contract gave the City power to control a single sign provider and exclude others at transit stops, which prevented numerous disparate parties from posting signs, id. ; and third, the City's judgment that its interest in a complete ban on signage should yield to controlled signage at transit stops was a classically legislative decision approved by Metromedia, id. at 910-11. In the end, unlike Greater New Orleans, the City's contract did not work at inexorable cross-purposes with the interest in banning signs because a regime that combines the Sign Ordinance and the [contract] still arrests the uncontrolled proliferation of signage and thereby goes a long way toward cleaning up the clutter, which the City believed to be a worthy legislative goal. Id. at 911. The court also found the City's effectively partial ban on signage was narrowly tailored to its interests mainly because, if a total ban was permissible, as Metromedia indicated, then a partial ban must also be, and the supervision of a single sign provider at transit stops could plausibly contribute to the interests in visual coherence and aesthetic quality. Id. at 911-12. Importantly, as the court in World Wide Rush did, the court rejected the plaintiff's reliance on the Ninth Circuit's decision in Ballen because neither the sign ban nor the transit stop exception were content-based, and if the based upon the identity of the speaker, the sign provider doesn't say anything; it only sells space to advertisers who say things. Id. at 912.