Can Offensive Commercial Signs Be Prohibited?
Updated version coming soon
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Coates’ Canons NC Local Government Law
Can Offensive Commercial Signs Be Prohibited?
Published: 11/09/11
Last-Revised: August 15, 2022
Author Name: David Owens
Updated version coming soon
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One Response to “Can Offensive Commercial Signs Be Prohibited?”
Bill Brinton
Local governments in North Carolina are not prohibited from enacting a total prohibition on offsite commercial signs, commonly known as billboards. However, a local government cannot pick and choose the content of what can appear on commercial billboards if the they are allowed.
Some states (Hawaii, Alaska, Maine and Vermont) and thousands of local governments around the country have enacted legislation prohibiting all billboards (offsite commercial billboards).
In 1981 in Metromedia the Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether off-site commercial billboards could be prohibited within the constraints of the First Amendment. “If the city has a sufficient basis for believing that billboards are traffic hazards and are unattractive, then obviously the most direct and perhaps the only effective approach to solving the problems they create is to prohibit them,” Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 508 (White, J. for plurality); “Thus, offsite commercial billboards may be prohibited while onsite commercial billboards [signs] are permitted,” id. at 512 (White, J. for plurality); “a wholly impartial ban on billboards would be permissible,” id. at 533 (Stevens, J.); “a legislative body can reasonably conclude that every large billboard adversely affects the environment, for each destroys a unique perspective on the landscape and adds to the visual pollution of the city,” id. at 560-561 (Burger, J.); “In my view, aesthetic justification alone is sufficient to sustain a total prohibition of billboards within a community,” id. at 570 (Rehnquist, J.).
In the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal, a prohibition was upheld in Naegele Outdoor Advertising, Inc. v. City of Durham, 844 F.2d 172, 173-174 (4th Cir. 1988) (“we have affirmed summary judgments upholding against first amendment challenge the constitutionality of ordinances prohibiting off-premise commercial billboards”) (“‘aesthetics alone is a sufficient justification’ for this type of police power regulation”).
The commonsense approach is to enact a law prohibiting all offsite commercial billboards, and then follow various alternatives for removing the ones that are there now. A compelled removal of an outdoor advertising structure will likely require the payment of compensation in North Carolina, but it might be a choice acceptable to local government as opposed to awaiting for attrition to take its toll.
A good source of information is Scenic America, scenic.org.