The US Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled that an Arizona church has the right to put directional signs pertaining to its Sunday service against a town regulation that limits the size and duration of the signs.
Good News Community Church of Gilbert, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, won the lawsuit eight years after it originally filed the case against the town of Gilbert, Arizona.
In its decision, the Supreme Court struck down a free speech test used by some courts that allowed the government to decide what speech is more valuable and entitled to greater protection under the First Amendment.
The Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals used the test to determine that Good News Community Church's religious signs expressed far less valuable speech than what the town called "political" and "ideological" signs, thereby justifying the town's stricter limits on the church's signs.
The High Court said Gilbert's sign rules discriminated against a particular content and that the city did not have any legitimate government interest to warrant such discrimination.
"An innocuous justification cannot transform a facially content-based law into one that is content neutral.... Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech. That is why the First Amendment expressly targets the operation of the laws—i.e., the 'abridg[ement] of speech'—rather than merely the motives of those who enacted them," the Supreme Court ruled.
Under Gilbert's Sign Code, political signs can be up to 32 sq. ft. and can be displayed for many months and unlimited in number while ideological signs can be up to 20 sq. ft., displayed indefinitely and unlimited in number.
The church's signs can only be up to 6 sq. ft, may be displayed for no more than 14 hours and are limited to four per property.
The Good News Community Church of Gilbert does not own any buildings so it holds its services in elementary school or other places.
To inform the public about its service location, the church would place temporary signs in public right-of-way abutting the street. Each sign would contain the church's name and time and location of the upcoming Sunday service.
Church members would post the signs on Saturday and remove them early in the day on Sunday. Gilbert's Sign Code compliance manager cited the church for violating the code twice, saying they exceeded the time limits for displaying its directional signs.
The church and Pastor Clyde Reed filed the case in 2007 before the US District Court in Arizona.
"The Supreme Court's unanimous ruling is a victory for everyone's freedom of speech. Speech discrimination is wrong regardless of whether the government intended to violate the First Amendment or not, and it doesn't matter if the government thinks its discrimination was well-intended," said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman, who argued the case before the Supreme Court last January.
Reed earlier said "this whole experience has been shocking to me," according to Christian News.
"Our signs inviting people to church are very important yet are treated as second-class speech. We aren't asking for special treatment; we just want our town to stop favouring the speech of others over ours," he said.
