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Sign Regulation After Reed: Suggestions For Coping With Legal Uncertainty, Alan Weinstein, Brian Connolly
Sign Regulation After Reed: Suggestions For Coping With Legal Uncertainty, Alan Weinstein, Brian Connolly
All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications
This article discusses Reed v. Town of Gilbert, in which the Court resolved a Circuit split over what constitutes content based sign regulations. We note that Justice Thomas's majority opinion applies a mechanical "need to read" approach to this question, and then explore the doctrinal and practical concerns raised by this approach. Doctrinally, we explore the tensions between Thomas's "need to read" approach and the Court's current approach of treating some regulation of speech as content-neutral despite the fact that a message must be read to determine its regulatory treatment. A prime example being the Court's "secondary effects" doctrine. Practically, …
The First Amendment Protection Of Charitable Speech, Joseph Mead
The First Amendment Protection Of Charitable Speech, Joseph Mead
All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications
Although philanthropy ranks among the best of human endeavors, local governments across the country have severely restricted charitable entreaties by organizations and individuals alike, all in the name of eliminating "panhandlers." These laws rely on premises that increasingly conflict with Supreme Court instructions about the freedom of speech. Yet lingering uncertainty about where exactly charitable restrictions fall in First Amendment jurisprudence has encouraged local governments to innovate new statutory formulations to wage war on expressions of poverty in order to "clean up" their cities. This piece examines seven arguments commonly used to justify restrictions on charitable solicitations and finds them …