By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Yard signs are often as controversial as the politicians that they advertise, Save Jerseyans. Yes, they’re one of the clearest physical manifestations of free speech, but many residents also view them as indistinguishable from litter when they’re left to clutter intersections and bypass ramps for months after the voting ceases.
Is one Jersey Shore town going too far in seeking to control yard signs? To the point of limiting the right of opposition groups to oppose the majority party?
That’s the contention of some Marlboro Republicans who oppose an ordinance slated for consideration by town council on July 17th. The comprehensive amendment to the municipal code reportedly backed by oft-mentioned higher office aspirant and occasional Christiecrat Jon Hornik (I’ve re-posted it below for reading at your leisure) heavily regulates the placement of “temporary” yard signs ahead of elections (e.g. Christie/Guadagno 2013), and some detractors say a broad reading could impact free speech in the borough by design.
Let’s skip over motive and go right to the text.
Mea culpa: I’m not a property law guru, Save Jerseyans, but if you look at section F(8) of the ordinance, it seems pretty clear to me that the owner of the “adjacent property” is the owner of the property in front of which the sign is placed, not the neighbor. But that also doesn’t necessarily mean a court would consider it sufficiently narrowly tailored to avoid impinging upon residents’ exercise of the First Amendment. The bar is awfully high when political speech is on the line.
A stronger constitutional attack against the ordinance might center upon the prohibition against placement of signs, even on private property, 45-days before an election. An additional policy-based argument: isn’t a $1,250 fine and 90 days in jail a little harsh for placing a campaign sign on the wrong plot of soil?
Yard sign placement conflicts don’t represent fresh legal territory for the Garden State. N.J.S.A.45:22A-48.1 addresses Old Glory and pro-military signage but not political signage per se. In 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed suit against Hawthorne, New Jersey to contest a 32-day political yard sign display restriction after a resident Ron Paul supporter was ticketed. The town ultimately settled and rescinded the ban. More recently, in 2012, the N.J. Supreme Court upheld a condo resident’s right to display a political sign in his condominium window.
My inner legal nerd would love to see someone take a so-called duration ban challenge all the way to the Supremes for a ruling; frankly, the only reason more of similar ordinances in other towns aren’t challenged, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, is owing to the fact that citizens who think nothing of throwing coffee cups out of the car window or populating their lawns with lawn gnomes are perfectly okay with not having to see the political processes’s tackier incarnation on their own street. God bless America.
As always, we invite you to draw your own conclusions; images of the 3-page resolution at issue in Marlboro (#2014-11) are below the fold:
Several towns have these bans….While I question some of the details, I’m motly ok with home rule
Great opportunity for someone to sue the town and win a big judgment and an attorney to get legal fees, because the chances of losing this case are 0%.
That whole pesky free speech thing… (Sarcasm, folks)