Ladue v. Gilleo

On 13 June 1994, the Supreme Court issued its decision. It affirmed the rulings of the lower courts, holding that the new Ladue city ordinance violated Margaret Gilleo's right to free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Justice Stevens wrote the opinion for the unanimous majority, with Justice O'Connor writing a concurring opinion The Supreme Court based its decision on four key points.

The first point made by Stevens was that, although cities have a right to regulate the placement of signs, they cannot enforce the law selectively based on the messages contained in the signs. However, in this case, the Supreme Court accepted from the outset that the city of Ladue's law banning signs did not discriminate on the basis of content. It simply found that the city's interest in regulating clutter was outweighed by Gilleo's right to express her opinion.

In its second point, the Supreme Court asserted that the city of Ladue had "almost completely foreclosed" on a vital means of expression by its citizens. Even if not done on the basis of content, the banning of an entire media--in this case signs--poses too much of a threat to the free speech of citizens to be allowed to stand.

Third, the Court rejected the city's claim that Gilleo could have found other means of expressing her viewpoint, such as pamphlets or newspaper advertisements. The Court ruled that personal signs are a unique way of expressing one's opinion and cannot be equated with other methods of expression. As Justice Stevens wrote, "Residential signs are an unusually cheap and convenient form of communication. Especially for persons of modest means or limited mobility, a yard or window sign may have no practical substitute." Therefore the city could not choke off this avenue entirely without severe free speech repercussions.

Finally, the Court sought to put the issue at hand into a historical context. It affirmed Americans' special regard for individual liberty in the home and warned against government attempts to restrict a person's ability to speak there. The Court also suggested that Ladue residents' own interest in maintaining their property values would prompt them to police themselves on the issue of rampant proliferation of signs. Justice Stevens wrote, "We are confident that more temperate measures could in large part satisfy Ladue's stated regulatory needs without harm to the First Amendment rights of its citizens. As currently framed, however, the ordinance abridges those rights."