Insider mentioned the pending Ohio Supreme Court tax case Wednesday and Thursday we had a good news ruling. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled against Cincinnati’s targeted billboard tax as an unconstitutional burden on free speech.

A little background on the Ohio Case:

• Norton Outdoor Advertising and Lamar Advertising challenged Cincinnati’s billboard tax in 2018 on constitutional grounds.
• The trial judge ruled in favor of Norton and Lamar; a State appellate court ruled for the City (the Ohio Supreme Court reversed the First District Court of Appeals).
• The Cincinnati billboard tax was inspired by a similar targeted tax in Baltimore, imposed in 2013. Clear Channel Outdoor challenged the Baltimore tax; courts in Maryland have ruled in favor of the City. Clear Channel has asked the US Supreme Court to take the Baltimore case.
• The Ohio Supreme Court (on September 16) specifically rejected the legal reasoning of the highest court in Maryland: “We do not find its analysis to be persuasive.”

Highlights from the Ohio Supreme Court:

“Included in the guarantee of free speech and a free press is the prohibition against selective taxation that is designed to suppress, control, or punish speech or that is structured in such a way that the tax creates an unacceptable potential for censorship by the government or self-censorship by speakers and publishers.

The city of Cincinnati has imposed such a discriminatory tax, singling out members of the press and placing the tax’s burden on a small group of speakers and publishers in a way that both directly limits the circulation of protected speech and creates the danger that speech will be added or removed based on a desire to please, or avoid the wrath of, city council. That the tax involves billboards rather than the institutional press is of no consequence, and strict scrutiny applies. And because the city’s need to raise revenue does not justify its selective tax on speech and the press, the tax does not survive strict scrutiny and therefore impermissibly infringes on the rights to free speech and a free press enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Norton Outdoor is represented by attorneys Michael Galasso and Esther Norton of Robbins Kelly Patterson & Tucker.  Lamar is represented by Guy Taft and Stephen Schilling of Strauss Troy.

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