Yard signs are a protected form of free expression under First Amendment jurisprudence. City officials can place reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on yard signs, but flat bans on yard signs are unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a flat ban on yard signs in City of Ladue v. Gilleo (1994). The ordinance in question banned all signs except for “residence identification” signs, for-sale signs and signs warning of safety hazards. Margaret Gilleo displayed a yard sign with the message, “Say No To War in the Persian Gulf, Call Congress Now.”
City officials removed her sign. She eventually sued, alleging a violation of her First Amendment rights. She later placed another pro-peace sign in her second-story window, which also drew the ire of city officials. Ultimately, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which unanimously ruled in favor of Gilleo.
City bans on yard signs 'suppress too much speech'
Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the city “has almost completely foreclosed a venerable means of communication that is both unique and important.” He added that the city “has totally foreclosed that medium to political, religious, or personal messages.”
To Stevens, the flat ban on virtually every yard sign — even if content-neutral — simply banned too much speech. He ultimately categorized the city ban on yard signs as a complete ban on a medium of speech, writing: “Although prohibitions foreclosing entire media may be completely free of content or viewpoint discrimination, the danger they pose to the freedom of speech is readily apparent — by eliminating a common means of speaking, such measures can suppress too much speech.”
One yard-sign law barred for-sale signs to stem white flight
Years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on another type of yard sign – “for sale” signs in Linmark Associates v. Willingsboro (1977). The city had barred for-sale signs to stem the tide of white flight and to promote racial integration. The Court determined that the city’s interest in maintaining a stable, racially integrated neighborhood was not sufficient to support a flat ban on “for sale” signs.
11th Circuit: Sheriff can't put signs in sex offender yards during Halloween
Not all yard signs cases involve complete bans on speech. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in McClendon v. Long (2022) invalidated a sheriff department policy of placing yard signs in the yards of former sex offenders during the Halloween season, warning children and their parents that the owners were such offenders. The appeals court ruled that this was unconstitutional compelled speech.
While the Supreme Court invalidated bans on yard signs in Gilleo and Linmark, this does not mean that all ordinances regulating yard signs violate the First Amendment.
Conceivably, a city ordinance could impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on speech and a city may have an aesthetics interest that is furthered by a ban on a certain number of yard signs per yard. Furthermore, many city ordinances impose a time limit on the time period in which campaign signs may be displayed in yards. For example, many ordinances limit the display of campaign signs from 60 days before the election to 30 days after the election.
David L. Hudson, Jr. is a law professor at Belmont who publishes widely on First Amendment topics. He is the author of a 12-lecture audio course on the First Amendment entitled Freedom of Speech: Understanding the First Amendment (Now You Know Media, 2018). He also is the author of many First Amendment books, including The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech (Thomson Reuters, 2012) and Freedom of Speech: Documents Decoded (ABC-CLIO, 2017).