Welcome to Pasadena ... now shut up!
Couple sues city over orders to remove anti-war banner from their home
By Joe Piasecki 09/22/2005
As peace activists prepare for massive Saturday demonstrations in Los Angeles, Washington DC and throughout the country, an anti-war Pasadena couple is fighting for the right to speak out against the occupation of Iraq in their own home.
On June 21, city Code Enforcement officials cited Linda Vista Street residents Mary Gavel and Patrick Briggs for hanging an anti-war sign on the front of their home.
The sign read: “War starts with ‘W.’ Bush lied. People died.”
About six feet high and three feet wide, it violated city zoning laws that restrict homeowners from hanging signs larger than one square foot and carry a penalty of up to $500.
When the couple replaced that sign in August with a smaller one that read “Support Cindy Sheehan,” as the Weekly first reported in August, Code Enforcement officials returned to the property.
After weeks of trying to obtain a permit, the frustrated couple turned instead to the American Civil Liberties Union — which last week filed a federal lawsuit to force city officials to abolish rules allegedly violating the First and Fourteenth amendments.
“This is the least hospitable set of ordinances to the expression of residential political speech in the nation,” said ACLU of Southern California Legal Director Mark Rosenbaum, who filed the suit last Wednesday in Los Angeles.
“Real estate signs are treated with more deference than political signs on matters of urgent importance to the community,” he said. “Putting up a one-foot by one-foot sign is essentially insuring invisibility. There is a core First Amendment principle that size matters.”
Meanwhile, city officials are withholding comment on the suit until it has been fully reviewed, said city spokeswoman Ann Erdman. However, she did explain that zoning code is “content neutral” in that it carries no ban on political speech but also makes no special exception for it.
In a Sept. 15 letter from Pasadena City Attorney Michele Beal Bagneris to Rosenbaum, Bagneris asked the ACLU to drop the lawsuit.
She described the city as not wanting to infringe on free speech but skeptical that the ACLU might be grandstanding.
“We appreciate the objectives which underlie the filing of your lawsuit,” wrote Bagneris, who added later, “We are willing and anxious to discuss this matter with the ACLU, but wonder if there are objectives involved that made litigation a first resort and that will make continued litigation the first preference.”
Bagneris, who complained the city first heard of the lawsuit through the press, said the complaint lacked “critical facts” — namely that the city does allow permits for large temporary signs.
“Rather than address the question of whether or not the actual sign standards meet constitutional muster, the complaint creates a ‘straw man’ of a one square foot sign which is used as the central element of the media strategy,” she wrote, adding that no enforcement action is currently planned or threatened, leaving little “controversy ripe for adjudication.”
On Monday, Pasadena City Council members were scheduled to discuss the suit in closed session meeting, but did not, said Mayor Bill Bogaard.
“Whether you are liberal or conservative, you should have the right to voice your opinion about our political situation,” said Briggs, a 38-year-old business analyst who regularly attends Pasadena’s All Saints Church with his wife.
“This is our pulpit, our soapbox, and it has been so effective with passersby,” added Gavel, a freelance writer who goes by the name Mattie Gavel-Briggs.
“Whether on lawns or in windows, residential signs, perhaps more than any other medium of speech, unmistakably signal the residents’ support for particular candidates, parties or causes,” reads the lawsuit.
“Particularly now,” it continued, “as the costs of mass media political campaigns soar well beyond the means of the vast majority of Americans, there will most frequently be no practical substitute for yard or window signs.”
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT