Opinion ID: 3035963
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Speaker-based exemptions9

Text: Section 47.06.205(4) provides, “public signs, signs for hospital or emergency services, legal notices, railroad signs and danger signs” must comply with the Sign Code, but need not be subject to the City’s permit and fee process. Plaintiffs insist that the limited exemptions of section 47.06.205(4) render the Sign Code content based because the City is expressing a preference for certain types of speech. We disagree. [12] The City interprets these provisions as providing exemptions to certain speakers and not to particular content. 9 We do not understand plaintiffs as challenging the speaker-based exemptions of LOC § 47.06.205(4) on equal protection grounds. Cf. Foti, 146 F.3d at 637-38 (refusing to address whether a picketing and sign ordinance that granted an exemption for government speech violated equal protection because plaintiffs failed to present these arguments to the district court). G.K. LTD. TRAVEL v. CITY OF LAKE OSWEGO 1117 See G.K. Ltd. Travel I, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6984 at ; see also LOC § 47.03.015 (defining public signs as “a sign erected and maintained by a public agency within the right-ofway of a street or alley”). Like the district court, we hold this construction to be reasonable.10 The Supreme Court in Turner Broad. Sys., Inc. v. FCC stated [S]peaker-based laws demand strict scrutiny when they reflect the Government’s preference for the substance of what the favored speakers have to say (or aversion to what the disfavored speakers have to say) . . . . [L]aws favoring some speakers over others demand strict scrutiny when the legislature’s speaker preference reflects a content preference. 512 U.S. at 658. In this case, the Sign Code reflects the City’s preference for not subjecting certain entities — public agencies, hospitals and railroad companies — to the requirements of the permitting and fee scheme.11 The exemptions are purely 10 In evaluating § 47.06.205(4) of the Sign Code, the district court found that exempting legal notices and danger signs from the permit and fee requirements of the Code was constitutionally impermissible. The district court reasoned that there are no obvious owners for legal notices or danger signs (as opposed to hospital or railroad signs) and the City’s limiting construction was therefore inapplicable. The court ordered these subsections severed from the ordinance, relying on Desert Outdoor Adver. where we concluded that exemptions in a sign ordinance for “official notices” and “warning” signs were content based. See G.K. Ltd. Travel I, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6984 at  (citing Desert Outdoor Adver., 103 F.3d at 820). The City has not appealed the district court’s ruling and we do not rule on the constitutionality of the severed exemptions. 11 We have previously questioned the constitutionality of a “wholesale exemption for government speech,” but we do not read Lake Oswego’s Sign Code to provide such an exemption. See Foti, 146 F.3d at 637. Rather, the public agency exemption applies only to the permitting scheme; public agencies are otherwise required to follow the substantive requirements of the Sign Code. See LOC § 47.06.205 (“The following 1118 G.K. LTD. TRAVEL v. CITY OF LAKE OSWEGO speaker based according to the City’s reasonable construction of the provision and say nothing of the City’s preference for the content of these speakers’ messages, nor do they allow the City to discriminate against disfavored speech. That is, plaintiffs have not shown that the City preferred the substance of railroad company messages, for instance, over travel agency messages and therefore exempted the railroad companies from the permitting process. See One World One Family Now v. City & County of Honolulu, 76 F.3d 1009, 1012 n.5 (9th Cir. 1996) (“Because [the] exemptions don’t enable the city to discriminate against ideas it disfavors, they don’t render the ordinance content-based.”). Moreover, these institutional speakers are still subject to the mandates of the Sign Code concerning the type, number and characteristics of signs that are permissible in the City; it is just that certain speakers need not obtain permits (and pay the associated fee) before posting their signs. That the law affects plaintiffs more than other speakers does not, in itself, make the law content based. See Ward, 491 U.S. at 791 (“A regulation that serves purposes unrelated to the content of expression is deemed neutral, even if it has an incidental effect on some speakers or messages but not others.”).