(6/28) The Carroll Valley Borough Council, in conjunction with the municipal Planning Commission, will be implementing changes to borough regulations pertaining to signage to protected speech, especially signage posted on private property.
Like many other municipalities throughout the country, the Carroll Valley Borough Council found itself faced with the need to consider carefully crafting new or revised language in its regulations to avoid regulating, or potentially appearing to regulate, language on signs.
Attempting to regulate verbiage on signs, especially those posted on private property, has frequently been found to be in violation of the First Amendment rights, notably when it comes to "personal expression signs."
"Personal expression signs" might include signs that are political in nature (such as election signs), or display a personal opinion, or reference a specific topic of interest, or a personal position on a particular topic.
Borough Solicitor Zachary Rice was previously asked to review the municipality’s current regulations pertaining to signage, and Rice presented his initial recommendations at the June meeting of the council.
Rice stated, "Municipalities everywhere have been grappling with this very specific and narrow question of, ‘How do we regulate signage, specifically political signage.’" A lot of the root cause to re-examining signage laws, he said, were tied to recent political, national elections.
The attorney noted that where municipalities "have gotten themselves in hot water with review in courts," has been when a municipality’s sign ordinance has tried to regulate the content of "personal expression signs" differently than the content of other types of signs (such as commercial).
Rice recommended any reference to sign verbiage be purged from existing regulations and stressed that signs on private property could still be regulated regarding such aspects as the size of the signs, the placement of any signs, and any illumination of the signs, and prohibit their placement where they could cause confusion to vehicular or pedestrian traffic.
When asked about obscene language being placed on a sign on private property, the attorney stated that the Supreme Court has established criteria determining what language can’t be used on a sign. "You could … prohibit types of speech or content that is otherwise (and thus) not protected under the First Amendment (based on Supreme Court rulings)," he said.
The council decided to start editing the current sign regulations to reflect current thoughts on Fifth Amendment rights, and to also meet jointly with the Planning Commission to do a more thorough overhaul on the borough’s signage regulations.
