In Boyer v. City of Simi Valley, published October 14,2020, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed in part and affirmed in part dismissal at the pleadings stage of a lawsuit challenging a city mobile billboard ban. The ordinance banned mobile billboards on public property. It excluded authorized emergency or construction-related vehicles. The plaintiff challenged the ordinance as a content-based regulation of speech that violated the First Amendment. The district court concluded that the ordinance was content-neutral, and passed the rational-relation test as a reasonable time, place, and manner regulation. It also dismissed the plaintiff's state law claims.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the district court erred in deeming the ordinance content-neutral. A ban on all mobile billboards on public property would be content-neutral. But the court could not determine a ground for excluding emergency or construction vehicles from the ban except for the content of the speech, and the city did not supply any. Content-based speech regulations must satisfy strict scrutiny. Because the district court did not analyze the ordinance under strict scrutiny, the 9th Circuit reversed and remanded dismissal of the federal law claims. It affirmed the dismissal of the state law claims. The district court had jurisdiction to analyze those claims on the merits and dismiss them at the same time it dismissed the federal claims.
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