Our good buddies at the Institute for Justice are hot on the heels of yet another critical case:
As the Akron Beacon-Journal reports, via the AP, Court to decide battle over ‘for sale’ sign
CINCINNATI – A federal appeals court will decide if an Ohio village violated a man’s freedom of speech when it forced him to remove a “for sale” sign on a car parked in front of his home.
Chris Pagan said Glendale police threatened to cite him in 2003 under an ordinance forbidding such signs on vehicles in public areas.
Pagan removed the sign from his 1970 Mercury Cougar and said it hurt his ability to sell the car.
“I sold it under market value, because it was the best deal I could get,” said Pagan, an attorney who later filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the village’s half-century-old sign regulation.
What’s astonishing about this to me is the way they manage to frame their commitment to freedom of commercial speech not in terms of free speech more generally, but rather in terms of a “taking”. The guy couldn’t put a proper for sale sign on his car, you see, and so he ended up having to sell for less than market value, he says. The horror!
(What *is* a 1970 Mercury Cougar worth, you ask? Well, in Kuwait, they apparently go for 8,000 Kuwaiti dollars — but that price is no doubt affected by the fact that this is the only 1970 Cougar in all of Kuwait.)
Damn over-regulated emirate must have laws barring the import of great free American cars, or something. Because everything can always be explained by referencing the freedom to buy, except when it’s all about freedom to sell, or freedom to exploit, or freedom to pollute, or the freedom to behave with utter social irresponsibility.
IJ lays it down this way:
“If they can ban totally harmless speech on a whim, what happens when more controversial speech comes along?” said Jeff Rowes, a lawyer for the institute who is helping Pagan with the case. “If we decide that putting someone in jail is the right way to deal with ordinary speech like a ‘for sale’ sign, the First Amendment is in grave jeopardy.”
But really, now, just how slippery a slope is it from purely commerical speech like “for sale” to political, religious, or some other kind of expressive speech? The line seems easy to draw: selling for the highest possible price just isn’t a critical speech right. And “I want to make more money more money more money” is tawdry selfishness, not protected political expression.
Of course, in my book, keeping suburbs clean of ugly signage isn’t a compelling government interest either — which is why this seems an entirely trivial case.
Posted by Paulo Freire 