Sign Regulations and the Threat to Free Speech

Reason reports:

In 2006, auto shop owner Wayne Weatherbee decided to expand his business by purchasing a vacant lot that had once held another auto shop dating back to the 1940s. But zoning officials in the city of Clermont, Florida, determined that Weatherbee's plans for the lot clashed with the city's aesthetic agenda and zoning regulations, so they asked him to first obtain a special permit before doing what he wanted with his own property.

Rather than apply for said permit, Weatherbee posted a dozen signs on his lot criticizing city officials, including the city manager and chief of police. One sign proclaimed: "Intimidation/Harassment—Selective Law Enforcement—False Arrests—False Documents—What's Next? At Least They Haven't Taken My Freedom Of Speech YET!"

Predictably, the city’s next move was to take away Weatherbee's freedom of speech.

Since the 1950s, the United States Supreme Court has unfortunately held that basic constitutional liberties should yield to the government's self-proclaimed interest in tailoring local aesthetics. Writing for a unanimous Court in 1954, Justin William O. Douglas upheld Congress' decision to eliminate a supposedly blighted African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

"The concept of public welfare is broad and inclusive," wrote Douglas, and it includes "aesthetic as well as monetary values." It was the government's prerogative to "determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled," according to Douglas.

Granted broad license by this and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, it's no surprise that local governments throughout the country have used aesthetics to justify all sorts of bullying, harassment and censorship in the name of the public good. Small businesses often bear the brunt of local aesthetics controls, as city officials seek to impose their own views of what looks and feels good on the community at large. But even with the Supreme Court's endorsement of such nonsense, the lower courts still occasionally recognize First Amendment restrictions on the state's aesthetic brutalism.

The decline of property rights in America.