by Rachel Greifenkamp
International Outdoor, Inc. v City of Roseville
(Michigan Court of Appeals, May 1, 2014)
In the City of Roseville, Michigan International Outdoor, Inc. (IO) applied to erect a billboard 70 feet high, 672 square feet total, 365 feet from property that was zoned residential. Due to regulations on billboards within city limits, the Building Department denied the application. IO appealed the decision to the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) who also denied the application. IO then appealed to the circuit court, challenging the constitutionality of the ordinances. After the circuit court also found in favor of the City, IO appealed to the State of Michigan Court of Appeals.
IO argued that the ordinances of the City of Roseville constitute an unconstitutional prior restraint because the city has not applied the stated objective standards for billboards found in the ordinance in a consistent manner. It maintained that the ZBA has ignored or waived those objective standards on an ad hoc basis, and relies solely on subjective criteria such as “in harmony with the general purpose of the sign ordinance,” “injurious to the neighborhood,” and “detrimental to the public welfare” when denying billboard applications. These criteria, IO argued, have been found in previous court cases to be insufficiently precise and therefore unconstitutional prior restraint. The city countered that the circuit court was correct when it found the regulations on their face to be narrow, objective, and definite, and that IO’s proposed billboard did not meet the standards of those regulations.
After noting that IO’s challenge was to the application of the ordinances by the ZBA, the court noted the key holdings in previous prior restraint cases:
- A licensing scheme that gives public officials the power to deny use of a forum in advance of actual expression is a prior restraint on First Amendment liberties.
- Any system of prior restraints on expression bears a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.
- A law subjecting the exercise of First Amendment freedoms to the prior restraint of a license must contain narrow, objective, and definite standards to guide the licensing authority.
- Moreover, a licensing law that places “unbridled discretion in the hands of a government official or agency constitutes a prior restraint and may result in censorship.
Because IO could not meet the strict application of the narrow, objective, and definite terms of the city’s Sign Ordinance, it was required to present evidence that a variance from the ordinance was necessary; i.e., that a practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship existed. The record reflected that the ZBA applied this test in determining that a variance could not be granted. the application of the test meant that the ZBA was not operating with unbridled discretion when it denied the variance.
Additionally, IO argued that commercial speech is protected under the First Amendment. As such, any restriction or regulation must be advance a substantial government interest, and the ordinance must be narrowly tailored to meet that interest. IO does not believe that it is narrowly tailored because the ZBA has the discretion to grant one request for a billboard otherwise restricted by the ordinance, but deny others. The court rejected this argument, noting that the stated purpose of the ordinance – “to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the City of Roseville, including but not limited to defining and regulating signs in order to promote aesthetics, to avoid danger from sign collapse and to regulate sign materials, avoid traffic hazards from sign locations and size, avoid visual blight and provide for the reasonable and orderly use of signs” – is a substantial governmental interest. The court simply stated that IO provided “no relevant legal authority or factual support for its claim.
The circuit court’s decision in favor of the City of Roseville was affirmed.
