Court Opinion

ID: 9564265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:56:55.610387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:19.437674
License: Public Domain

*887NEWMAN, J., Concurring.
I share Justice Richardson’s unease regarding the prohibition that Justice Clark finds illegal. Unlike both of them, however, I believe that we must examine carefully the state as well as the federal Constitution.
Article I, section 2 of the California Constitution declares: “Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. A law may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech or press.”
That second sentence is imperative. By no means does it imply that federal precedents confine freedom of expression in this state. (See art. I, § 24: “Rights guaranteed by this Constitution are not dependent on those guaranteed by the United States Constitution”; Wilson v. Superior Court (1975) 13 Cal.3d 652, 658 [119 Cal.Rptr. 468, 532 P.2d 116] (“A protective provision more definitive and inclusive than the First Amendment is contained in our state constitutional guarantee ...”); Note, Rediscovering the California Declaration of Rights (1974) 26 Hastings L.J. 481.)
Notwithstanding Ogden Nash’s poignant dictum (see next-to-last sentence of the majority opinion), I am not persuaded that this court should defer to city officials’ views that one mode of communication in the city should be outlawed because it seems “particularly unsightly and intrusive” (ante, p. 868).
Some limits on time, place, and manner are of course permissible. Yet as the majority suggest (see their fn. 16), other varieties of speech indeed may merit more protection than is accorded “commercial speech”. Further, I stress the brief reminder in footnote 14 of the majority opinion that an individual advertiser “retains the ability to assert that, owing to the absence of reasonable alternative means of communication, the ordinance cannot constitutionally be applied to prevent him from using a billboard to proclaim his message.” (Cf. the exhibits in Annex A of the amicus brief filed here on Aug. 27, 1979.)
The ordinance here ought to be redrafted. I hope the drafters will not feel too circumscribed by the majority’s footnote 2, which purports (with no citation of legislative history) to proscribe signs that “clearly fall within the intendment of the enactment.” Those signs are distinguished from “less obtrusive, noncommercial signs that present no significant aesthetic blight or traffic hazard.” Then, in order to articu*888late that distinction, a definition in the Revenue and Taxation Code is endorsed somewhat heroically.
I find in the record no evidence that San Diego lawmakers would have adopted or would now adopt that cryptic, tax-based definition. What about hillside displays and cloth or plastic banners, for example, and signs painted on fences and on the walls of warehouses, barns, other buildings: Are they “rigidly assembled sign[s], display[s], or device[s] permanently affixed. . .or permanently attached” within the endorsed definition? Yet they seem to be “outdoor advertising display signs” within the meaning of the ordinance, and many of them would have some permanence. Also, what happens if a large rather than “a small sign placed on one’s front yard” announces a political or religious message or a labor dispute? (Cf. the final sentence of the first paragraph in the majority’s fn. 2.)
Those kinds of borderline issues do seem solvable, and thus I concur in the reversal of the judgment.