[EL] Check out Postal Worker Unions | Tea Party Group|Mail Service | Th...

[Bill Maurer]

Bev, 

I totally agree with you about home-owners' organizations, but they are
not the government.  I do believe that local ordinances that restrict
signs, particularly on the content of the sign, do violate the First
Amendment.  And the Court in Ladue noted the importance to political
speech of a sign on a person's house in that it gives the message a
personal and identity-based component.  

Thanks for your thoughts,

Bill   

-----Original Message-----
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Bev
Harris
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 11:20 AM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Check out Postal Worker Unions | Tea Party Group|Mail
Service | Th...

I think the issue was not his right to speak his opinion, but where he
put the
sign.

If you've ever owned a home that required membership in the homeowners
association, you'd be familiar with how intrusive that can get. They
tell you
what color you can paint your house, what you can park in your driveway,
when
to mow your lawn and yes, what signage they will allow. (where I lived
it was
none; some places political signs can only be a certain size)

Local ordinances can also be restrictive about signage. I happen to be
in Santa
Fe New Mexico at the moment. They can't have signs higher than
buildings. It's
dang hard to find the store you are looking for. I guess you could say
that,
too, is restricting the store owner's first amendment rights, but I
doubt that
it is; what is it restricting is location of sign and size of sign.


Quoting Bill Maurer <wmaurer at ij.org>:

> So, we need to familiarize ourselves with local ordinances before we
can
> speak on our own property now?  When did Ladue (or the First
Amendment,
> for that matter) get overturned?

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the
right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for
them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over
the
instruments of government we have created.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog
group
funded entirely by citizen donations.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057


----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election