By Lauren Markoe, Religion News Service and BJC Staff Reports
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 12 considered a tiny church’s curbside sign in a case that could raise the bar on government regulation of speech and make it easier for houses of worship to advertise their services.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, the nonprofit advocacy group that represents Pastor Clyde Reed and his Good News Community Church, bills the case, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, as a religious rights case. But their attorney mostly argued it on free speech grounds.
“The town code discriminates on its face by treating certain signs differently based solely on what they said,” attorney David A. Cortman told the justices. “The treatment we’re seeking is merely equal treatment under the First Amendment.”
The town of Gilbert, Arizona, outside Phoenix, allows political signs to be much larger and permits them to stay up much longer, Cortman said.
Chief Justice John Roberts noted that Cortman’s case did not rely on the religious nature of the plaintiff.
“Your argument does not turn on the fact that it’s a church’s sign, does it?” asked Roberts. “Your argument would be the same if this is a temporary sign about where the soccer game was going to be?”
“That’s right,” Cortman answered.
With no more than 30 congregants, Good News Community Church has no permanent home. Each week, members planted so-called temporary directional signs — the kind intended to guide people to a concert or school picnic — to help people find the church, since its location often changed.
The congregation brought suit against the town seven years ago after receiving multiple citations for failing to take its signs down within an hour, as town rules require. But the church said the same rules didn’t apply to political signs or homebuilders who erected signs to entice people to look at their new houses.
“This is a speech case, not a religious rights case,” said Ira Lupu, a law professor emeritus at George Washington University, who has followed the case. “The issues would be the same if the plaintiff were the operator of a weekly meeting by a secular nonprofit group to discuss books or social problems.”
Philip W. Savrin, who argued for the town, said municipalities have a right to control litter and clutter on their roadsides, and he said the rules on temporary directional signs apply equally to church, events, barbecues and soccer games.
But several justices had a hard time with that argument, questioning whether a church’s temporary sign was just about direction or if it could relay messages that might put it into a different category of sign: a sign expressing an ideology or belief, for example, that would receive more favorable treatment under municipal sign laws.
The justices are expected to issue their decision by June.
From the January 2015 Report From the Capital. Click here to read the next article.
