Opinion ID: 151093
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Melrose's Equal Protection Claim

Text: Melrose also raises an equal protection challenge to the application of the Zoning Code to its sign applications. [8] It contends that the Zoning Board treated its applications differently than those for new signage at Heinz Field, PNC Park, Mellon Arena, and I.C. Light Amphitheater. According to Melrose's complaint, large, corporate, commercial entities are allowed to name buildings in Pittsburgh without any restrictions, while Melrose is subject to arbitrary, capricious and irrational discrimination. (J.A. at 144.) Melrose further insinuates in its brief on appeal that this allegedly disparate treatment was also motivated by the taxpayer funding of the construction of these other facilities. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment commands that no State shall `deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,' which is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike. City of Cleburne, Tex. v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 439, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985) (citation omitted). In Congregation Kol Ami v. Abington Township, we discussed the two-step inquiry outlined in City of Cleburne for reviewing an equal protection challenge to a zoning ordinance. 309 F.3d 120, 136-37 (3d Cir.2002). This inquiry properly places the initial burden on the complaining party first to demonstrate that it is `similarly situated' to an entity that is being treated differently before the local municipality must offer a justification for its ordinance. Id. at 137. Our analysis in this case begins and ends at this first step. Melrose has clearly failed to establish that it is similarly situated to those entities whose signs have been approved. As outlined supra, Melrose's sign applications simply fail to satisfy the criteria outlined by the Zoning Board for determining whether a sign with advertising aspects can still properly be classified as an Identification Sign. To the extent that Melrose challenges the criteria themselves, rather than their application to its cases, we reject this argument for the same reason we rejected Melrose's First Amendment claims. Having determined that the criteria are not content-based, but instead facilitate a contextual analysis, we find that they survive scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. See Brown v. City of Pittsburgh, 586 F.3d 263, 283 (3d Cir.2009) ([W]here the state shows a satisfactory rationale for a content-neutral time, place, and manner regulation, that regulation necessarily survives scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). [9]