Commercial Billboard Ban Upheld by Court

A federal appeals court Monday struck down part of a sign ordinance in Orange but said the city could continue to prohibit commercial billboards along major freeways and streets.

The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals resulted from a 3-year dispute between the city and National Advertising Co. over the Illinois firm’s request to erect 11 commercial billboards along Chapman and Tustin avenues and the Costa Mesa Freeway in Orange.

City officials have repeatedly denied the request, arguing that they have the right to control commercial advertising that poses aesthetic and traffic-control problems. The court ruled unconstitutional the part of the ordinance that regulates non-commercial billboards.

Pete Ferguson, an attorney representing the city in the lawsuit, called the appeals court ruling “a big victory for the city. This means that cities can regulate commercial billboards and can prohibit them out of existence.”

“This will significantly hurt the billboard companies,” he said. “They could lose millions of dollars from this.”

But Gary S. Mobley, attorney for National Advertising, said it was not clear that the ruling was a victory for the city. He said the case was being sent back to U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. in Los Angeles and that more arguments would be presented there.

“It is a very difficult thing to interpret,” he said of the ruling. “The district court will have to sort it out. I am not sure what our client’s response will be, but we are guardedly pleased with the court’s decision.”

Mobley said he was encouraged that the court had struck down, as a violation of the First Amendment, the city’s attempt to regulate non-commercial billboards.

The question now, he said, “is how to interpret commercial and non-commercial advertising.”

Ferguson said the ruling was clear. “If they want to put a sign up saying ‘U.S. Out of Nicaragua,’ then they could probably do that because that isn’t commercial advertising. But National Advertising is in the advertising business, the commercial advertising business,” and that is what the court said the city has a right to regulate, he said.

“We just didn’t want 1,200-square-foot billboards lining the Costa Mesa Freeway,” Ferguson said.

The case began in July, 1985, when National Advertising challenged the city ordinance banning billboards.

In August, 1986, a federal court declared portions of the sign ordinance unconstitutional because they violated First Amendment guarantees of free speech. The court ordered the city to issue National Advertising building permits to erect the 11 billboards, but the city denied them again, this time based on other criteria.

Judge Hatter later fined the city $10,000 and found it in contempt for not issuing the permits. The contempt order and fine were set aside in Monday’s ruling.