By Virginia Lascara
virginia.lascara@insidebiz.com
A nearly three year battle ended Tuesday after U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges told long-standing Norfolk-based Central Radio Co. that the city of Norfolk did not violate the company's rights when it forced it to take down a protest sign from its Hampton Blvd. location.
The 375-square-foot banner read “50 years on this street. 78 years in Norfolk. Over 100 employees. Threatened by eminent domain!”
Central Radio owner Bob Wilson hung the banner on the side of his building in April 2012 in protest of Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s attempts to condemn his land. The city had for years hoped to expand ODU’s University Village with land from Central Radio, a Norfolk company that completes communications, navigations and weapon control systems contracts for the government.
Norfolk Circuit Court originally ruled in favor of the NRHA condemning Central Radio’s land, but that ruling was overturned in September 2013 after the Virginia Supreme Court said that the lower court erred when it allowed NRHA to condemn the property following a 2007 change in legislation.
The legislation said only blighted or dilapidated property can be taken through eminent domain. When the authority filed its petition for condemnation on April 21, 2010, it agreed the property was not blighted, according to the ruling.
Although it’s been over a year since the Supreme Court ruled in Wilson’s favor, he continued to defended his right to hang the banner under the is First Amendment.
In 2012, two weeks after Central Radio hung the banner in protest, the city cited the banner, issuing two zoning violations - one for not applying for a sign permit and another for putting up a sign that is too large. City officials said zoning laws require the sign to be, at most, 60 square feet and that Wilson would be fined $1,000 per day if he did not take the sign down.
Wilson, however, contended that the banner was a political protest and part of his constitutional rights.
Wilson and his attorneys also asserted that the sign ordinance unconstitutionally exempted certain displays from regulation and was selectively enforced in a discriminatory manner by zoning officials.
“Today’s ruling allows the government to play favorites with the First Amendment by arbitrarily deciding who gets to speak and what they get to say,” said Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which represents Central Radio. “We will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision so that all citizens can be free to speak out on the issues that matter to them.”
The U.S. Circuit of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, defended the district court’s original judgment stating that the city’s purported traffic safety and aesthetics goals justified in restricting Central Radio’s protest.
“Upon our review, we agree with the district court that the sign ordinance is a content-neutral restriction on speech that satisfies intermediate scrutiny, and we find no merit in the plaintiff’s other constitutional challenges,” read the court decision made by Judges Steven Agee and Barbara Milano Keenan.
The dissenting opinion came from Judge Roger Gregory, who stated “This case implicates some of the most important values at the heart of our democracy: political speech challenging the government’s seizure of private property - exactly the kind of taking that our Fifth Amendment protects against,” wrote Gregory. “If a citizen cannot speak out against the king taking her land, I fear we abandon a core protection of our Constitution’s First Amendment.”