Arizona Court Rejects Metro Lights Reasoning
Judge Feess dodged the issue of whether aesthetics, alone, can be and is a substantial interest sufficient to sustain a government regulation of off-site advertising. That issue is squarely addressed and presented here.
-Judge Carmine Cornelio, Arizone Court, Pima County
In Metro Lights LLC vs. City of Los Angeles, the US District Court for the Central District of California struck down the City of Los Angeles’ sign code ordinance banning new billboards on account of the City’s Street Furniture program. Judge Gary Allen Feess conducted what’s knows as a Central Hudson Test in concluding that Los Angeles’s Street Furniture program caused its sign code to be unconstitutional. Feess concluded that if the sign ordinance existed without the Street Furniture program, it would be constitutional, but the government “may not impose limits on commercial speech to achieve supposed ends that are undermined by other governmental policies.”
The Feess decision, which is both under appeal by Los Angeles and being simultaneously used as a sword to strike down sign ordinances across America (including in New York City), was recently dealt a blow in Tuscon, Arizona.
Tuscon, Arizona is home to a man named Mark Mayor. Mayor investigated the legality of every billboard in Tuscon then had enforcement action taken against the signs. Clear Channel, which owns all the illegal signs, sued Mark Mayer, but also sued Tuscon using Judge Feess’ Metro Lights decision. In late May, the Arizone Superior Court rejected Clear Channel’s arguments [PDF]. Here is the decision:
