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COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Southern Illinois man challenges local sign ordinance at Seventh Circuit
Filed 5h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: David E. Lucas · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Mark Hamman is challenging Carbondale, Illinois's ordinance banning signs that encroach on the public right of way, after officials stopped him from staking anti-abortion signs outside a clinic. His attorney argued the city can't define 'public right of way' and enforces it inconsistently, permitting sidewalk sales and block parties while banning a small yard sign.
The city's attorney told the Seventh Circuit panel that common sense alone justifies the ordinance's safety, traffic, and property-value rationale, without citing any study or evidence. When pressed by Judge Amy St. Eve about whether Hamman could simply hold his sign instead, his lawyer noted Hamman said a carried sign could be used to strangle him.
The three-judge panel gave no timeline for its ruling.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A city that can't define its own ordinance but insists common sense covers it is basically asking the court to trust the vibes. Common sense is a fine thing at the dinner table, but it's a thin reed to hang a First Amendment case on when your own officials can't agree what the rule means. Somebody's going to have to write the actual definition eventually, might as well be before the next guy gets a sign taken away too.
