The US District Court for Nevada has partly granted and partly denied a petition by the City of Reno, Nevada to throw out a lawsuit by Strict Scrutiny Media.

Strict Scrutiny Media secured several billboard leases and permits on three parcels of land in Reno.

In 2016 the city  ordered that signs be taken down on various technicalities.

Strict Scrutiny Media and the landowner sued alleging first amendment violations.

The District Court ruled that Strict Scrutiny Media and the landowner has standing to sue and will be able to move forward with a challenge to Reno’s ban on new billboards on the grounds that the city has content-based exceptions for on-premise signs.

You can read an analysis of the decision at Rocky Mountain Sign blog and read the case documents at Justia.

Insider’s take: Lots of pending Reed v Gilbert challenges to local sign codes.  Insider will write later this week about a Reed v Gilbert challenge which is pending in Indiana.   Someone at Strict Scrutiny Media has a wicked sense of humor.  Strict Scrutiny is the most stringent standard of judicial review and is applied to content-based restrictions on billboards.  It says that content based rules are permissible only if they are necessary to serve a compelling public interest and  are narrowly drawn.

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