Clyde Reed, pastor of Good News Presbyterian, and his wife.
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in favor of a pastor who filed a lawsuit against the town of Gilbert, AZ, for restricting the church from placing signs about their church services.
The town of Gilbert had specific restrictions on different types of signs, but the three types of signs that came to the attention of the Supreme Court justices were political, ideological, and directional signs. The signs of Good News Community Church (also known as Good News Presbyterian), which has been holding Sunday services in temporary locations, would provide information on the location and times of the services for its congregation; and as such, their signs fell under the category of directional signs.
"Political signs" were only allowed to be up during the election season, and could only be 32 square feet. "Ideological signs," which were defined as signs "communicating a message or ideas," have no time restrictions, and could be up to 20 square feet. And "directional signs" had the most restrictions -- they could only be posted no more than 12 hours before the event, and one hour after, and could only be six square feet. No more than four of the same signs could be on the same property at the same time.
Good News Community Church was issued a citation by the town of Gilbert for violating the time restrictions, as they posted the signs early on Saturday and took them down around noon on Sunday. Pastor Clyde Reed (82) of the church then filed a lawsuit against the town, asserting that this violated their First Amendment free speech rights.
Though the District Court refused the church's motion for preliminary injunction, and the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruled against Reed, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that this was an unconstitutional act by the town, overruling the lower courts ten years since the initial lawsuit was filed in 2005.
"If a sign informs its reader of the time and place a book club will discuss John Locke's 'Two Treatises of Government,'" wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in the opinion, "that sign will be treated differently from a sign expressing the view that one should vote for one of Locke's followers in an upcoming election, and both signs will be treated differently from a sign expressing an ideological view rooted in Locke's theory of government."
"More to the point, the church's signs inviting people to attend its worship services are treated differently from signs conveying other types of ideas," he added.
"I never dreamed my small church signs would be a topic for the Supreme Court," said Reed. "This whole experience has been shocking to me -- our signs inviting people to church are very important yet are treated as second-class speech. We aren't asking for special treatment; we just want our town to stop favoring the speech of others over ours."
Reed was represented by David Cortman, the senior counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal organization that advocates for religious freedom.
"Speech discrimination is wrong regardless of whether the government intended to violate the First Amendment or not," Cortman said, "and it doesn't matter if the government thinks its discrimination was well-intended. It's still government playing favorites, and that's unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court today found."
