Opinion ID: 218050
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ban on Offsite Signs

Text: 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.