It’s been almost four years since the Supreme Court decision was handed down, but the landmark Reed v. the Town of Gilbert (Ariz.) is the (often unwanted) gift that keeps on giving for city planners, signmakers, clients of signmakers, and even associations such as the International Sign Association (ISA) that work with municipal planners to ensure their sign codes are Constitutionally compliant post-Reed. (ISA has a précis of the case here; in a nutshell, the Court ruled that “placing limits on temporary directional signs that were more stringent than these other types of temporary signs was a content-based regulation of speech—a violation of the First Amendment.”)

A lot of the Reed-related activity involves legacy sign regulations. “A lot of communities are still going back and reviewing their own sign codes to make sure that they’re compliant with the court decision,” said David Hickey, VP, Advocacy, for ISA. There are around 30,000 local jurisdictions with sign codes, and it’s taking some time for them all to get around to it. “So that’s still going on and probably will for the foreseeable future. ISA is working with communities as often as we can to give them pointers on how to make their sign codes as content-neutral as possible.”

There is a new, related case that is now before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Thomas v. Schroer) which, said Hickey, “will decide whether the longstanding distinction between on-premise signs and off-premise signs—billboards—is content-based and therefore unconstitutional.” There are a variety of additional cases around the country dealing with the distinction between commercial and non-commercial speech. “If either of these traditional sign-related regulations are found to be content-based, it should have significant implications for the sign and graphics industry,” said Hickey.