Over the past several decades, as they have become increasingly common and conspicuous, billboards also have become a source of land use litigation in both state and federal courts. The legal issues implicated by their regulation are broad, and include First Amendment and exclusionary zoning claims. As a result, local governments seeking to control the location and style of billboards must be sure to navigate carefully when weighing a landowner’s or an advertising company’s interests against those of the general public.
Most recently, on Feb. 11, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rendered a decision in Interstate Outdoor Advertising v. Mount Laurel, 706 F.3d 527 (3rd. Cir. 2013), which upheld a New Jersey municipality’s zoning ordinance banning billboards. There, a billboard company challenged the ordinance because it prohibited commercial and non-commercial billboards in the township, asserting that it violated free speech guarantees under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court disagreed, and found that the township sufficiently justified the ban with a report from the township engineer reviewing 37 articles on billboard and traffic safety and the township planner’s testimony that the ban preserved the “billboard-free aesthetic charm and character of the area.”
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