On The Front Lines
Rutherford Institute Files First Amendment Lawsuit in Berkeley County, South Carolina Alleging Prior Restraint, Religious Discrimination
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a lawsuit on behalf of a South Carolina resident who was told by county officials that he must remove signs with religious messages from his property because he did not first obtain county permission to put up the signs. The action, titled Oscar Moultrie v. Berkeley County, South Carolina, alleges that a county ordinance prohibiting religious signs without a permit is an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech and otherwise violates the First Amendment by discriminating against Oscar Moultrie's expression of his religious beliefs. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Charleston, S.C., requests that the court immediately issue an injunction barring enforcement of the ordinance against the Plaintiff and declare the ordinance unconstitutional.
A copy of The Rutherford Institute's complaint in Oscar Moultrie v. Berkeley County, South Carolina is available here.
"Under the First Amendment, citizens are not required to obtain government permission before exercising their right of free expression on their own property," said John Whitehead, President of The Rutherford Institute. "The people have a fundamental right to communicate their views on matters of politics and religion by posting signs on the property where they live. And government officials certainly can't discriminate against speech on private property on the basis of the content of the speech."
Between September 2009 and February 2010, Oscar Moultrie sought to share his religious beliefs with others by posting several signs on the property in Berkeley County where he resides. The signs included Biblical references and other religious messages, such as "READ Matthew 24:15 I Peter 4:17." Although Moultrie received no complaints from neighbors about his signs, in March 2010 he received a notice from Berkeley County officials asserting that the signs violated a local ordinance and demanding that the signs must either be removed or a permit must be obtained from the County. Under the threat of further legal action by the County, Moultrie removed the signs.
According to the complaint, the County ordinance provides that no sign may be erected on property within the County without first applying for a permit to erect the sign; additionally, a person must pay a $25 application fee to obtain a sign permit. However, the ordinance doesn't require permits for signs that advertise property "for rent" or "for sale" and "political signs" referring to a political candidate. The lawsuit claims that Moultrie's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights are violated by the sign ordinance and the violation notice because the permit requirement is an improper prior restraint on speech and that the ordinance's restrictions are improperly content based because the ordinance allows certain commercial and political messages, but restricts religious messages.
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