Couple Files Suit After Order to Remove Banner

Over the Fourth of July weekend, a Pasadena couple hung a 6-foot-wide banner above the front window of their home that read: “WAR starts with ‘W’. Bush lied. People died.”

Mary Gravel, a freelance writer, and her husband, Patrick Briggs, a business analyst, said it was their way of expressing their deeply felt opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. More important, they said, they hoped to stimulate discussion about the war among their neighbors.

To that end, they succeeded. But the banner also attracted the attention of the city’s Planning Department, which ordered the couple to remove it or face a fine.

The reason? Pasadena regulations limit to 1 square foot the size of signs at single-family and duplex homes. The couple’s sign measured 72 by 34 inches.

Not eager to be socked with a fine of up to $500, Gravel and Briggs took down the sign, along with a 42-by-28-inch poster they had more recently taped to another window, reading “Support Cindy Sheehan,” referring to the war-protester mother whose son was killed in Iraq.

On Wednesday, the ACLU of Southern California filed suit in federal court on behalf of the couple, contending that their 1st Amendment rights to free speech had been violated.

“The city’s limitation of residential signs to 1 square foot serves no legitimate, substantial or compelling state interest and is not narrowly tailored to serve appropriate public aesthetic and safety interests,” the suit alleges.

ACLU Legal Director Mark Rosenbaum said that limiting maximum signage to 1 square foot “offends a core constitutional principle: that as to the 1st Amendment, size matters.”

The suit also accuses the city of using a double standard in its sign enforcement. Homeowners, it says, have never been prevented from posting large signs on their lawns endorsing political candidates and ballot initiatives during election season.

Ann Erdman, Pasadena’s public affairs director, said city officials would have no comment until their lawyers had a chance to review the suit, which seeks an injunction blocking enforcement of the sign regulation.

Reached at their North Pasadena Heights home, Gravel, 40, and Briggs, 38, said they thought long and hard before deciding to sue.

“We’re both people of faith,” said Briggs. “We belong to All Saints Episcopal Church here in Pasadena, and we believe in living out our calling. In our case, we feel it’s every American’s responsibility to be involved in the political sphere in some way.”

As a result of the sign, Briggs and Gravel said, they’ve had “several dozen” conversations about the war with neighbors as well as strangers, including some who stopped their cars to chat.

“Many have been very positive. We’ve also had dissenters, but the discussions have all been very civil,” Gravel said. “Maybe if there had been more discussions like these, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in in Iraq.”

Gravel and Briggs said they had no evidence that anyone from the neighborhood had complained to the city about the signs. After receiving notice of the violation, the couple said they spent many hours on the telephone, in e-mail exchanges and in two visits to City Hall, seeking a waiver -- to no avail.

It was then that they decided to contact the American Civil Liberties Union, they said.

Though the couple removed the anti-war posters, they have posted a new sign in the front window that also violates the ordinance. Measuring 3 feet by 3 feet, it notifies neighbors that they can leave donations for Hurricane Katrina relief at the house.

So far, they said, the Planning Department has not come knocking.