City of Austin v. Reagan Nat'l Adver. of Austin, LLC

City of Austin v. Reagan Nat'l Adver. of Austin, LLC

Opinion

Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court.

Like thousands of jurisdictions around the country, the City of Austin, Texas (City), regulates signs that advertise things that are not located on the same premises as the sign, as well as signs that direct people to offsite locations. These are known as off-premises signs, and they include, most notably, billboards. The question presented is whether, under this Court’s precedents interpreting the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the City’s regulation is subject to strict scrutiny. We hold that it is not.

American jurisdictions have regulated outdoor advertisements for well over a century. See C. Taylor & W. Chang, The History of Outdoor Advertising Regulation in the United States, 15 J. of Macromarketing 47, 48 (Spring 1995). By some accounts, the proliferation of conspicuous patent-medicine advertisements on rocks and barns prompted States to begin regulating outdoor advertising in the late 1860s. Ibid.; F. Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising 500-501 (1929). As part of this regulatory tradition, federal, state, and local governments have long [*7]  distinguished between signs (such as billboards) that promote ideas, products, or services located elsewhere and those that promote or identify things located onsite. For example, this Court in 1932 reviewed and approved of a Utah statute that prohibited signs advertising cigarettes and related products, but allowed businesses selling such products to post onsite signs identifying themselves as dealers. Packer Corp. v. Utah, 285 U. S. 105, 107, 110, 52 S. Ct. 273, 76 L. Ed. 643.

On-/off-premises distinctions, like the one at issue here, proliferated following the enactment of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 (Act), 23 U. S. C. §131. In the Act, Congress directed States receiving federal highway funding to regulate outdoor signs in proximity to federal highways, in part by limiting off-premises signs. See §§131(b)-(c) (allowing exceptions for “signs, displays, and devices advertising the sale or lease of property upon which they are located” and “signs, displays, and devices . . . advertising activities conducted on the property on which they are located”). Under the Act, approximately two-thirds of States have implemented similar on-/off-premises distinctions. See App. A to Reply to Brief in Opposition (collecting statutes); Brief for State of Florida et al. as Amici Curiae 7, [*8]  n. 3 (same). The City represents, and respondents have not disputed, that “tens of thousands of municipalities nationwide” have adopted analogous on-/off-premises distinctions in their sign codes. Brief for Petitioner 19; see also App. B to Reply to Brief in Opposition (collecting examples of ordinances); Brief for State of Florida et al. as Amici Curiae 8, n. 4 (same).

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