LAW WATCH : A Sign of Freedom

In December of 1990, Margaret P. Gilleo, a resident of Ladue, a wealthy suburb of St. Louis, put a two-by-three-foot sign on her front lawn declaring her opposition to U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf War. In doing so, she soon learned from city officials, she had broken the law.

An ordinance banning the display of nearly all residential signs, supposedly to prevent “visual blight,” made hers illegal. Gilleo took issue with the law, and in time both a federal judge and a U.S. appeals court agreed that the ordinance was discriminatory in that it favored real estate signs over other signs--in the immediate case, over those expressing political views. This week, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court went beyond the lower courts’ interpretation. The issue, the court said, wasn’t simply that the ordinance allowed one kind of sign while forbidding others but that it violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free expression.

Cities, the court held again, have the authority to regulate such things as the size and location of signs, “within reasonable bounds and absent censorial purpose.” What they can’t do is issue a flat ban on signs on residential property. Describing slogans and similar signs that express a political viewpoint as “a venerable means of communication that is both unique and important,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the First Amendment almost completely precludes officials from trying to ban their display. The American people are the victors whenever government efforts to control free speech are judicially slapped down. This week they won again.