The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the constitutionality of a Riverside County sign and billboard ordinance because of its content-neutral approach to regulation. The ruling means that four signs along Highway 91 owned by the two billboard companies that brought the lawsuit are illegal. The outdoor advertising companies had argued that the ordinance violated their First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. At issue were two ordinances — what the court called the "original" ordinance regulating signs and structures, and the "new" sign ordinance that the county adopted in July 1999. Two of the four signs in question were built under the original ordinance, and two were built under the new ordinance. The companies, Valley Outdoor and Regency Outdoor Advertising, also maintained a leasehold for two unconstructed billboards in the same area. The original ordinance distinguished between off-site and on-site signs and imposed more extensive regulation on the off-site models. The new ordinance treated all signs the same. The ordinance also stated that all existing signs were deemed illegal unless they were erected in compliance with county ordinances in effect at the time of construction. Valley and Regency filed a lawsuit in early 2001 asking the district court to declare the original ordinance and the new ordinance unconstitutional on their faces and as the ordinances applied to Valley and Regency's situation. Federal District Court Judge Ronald Lew ruled that the new ordinance was unconstitutional on its face only insofar as it "defines the legality of signs in terms of their compliance with the ‘original' sign ordinance." Lew further ruled that this "grandfather" provision could be severed from the rest of the new ordinance, which he upheld. The sign companies appealed but got no further with a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. In the opinion by Judge Betty Fletcher, the appellate court never expressly stated what was unconstitutional about the new ordinance's grandfather provision. Instead, the court focused on the severability of the grandfather provision from the rest of the ordinance. "Grammatical severance is not a problem because both provisions are self-contained," Fletcher wrote. "Functionally, the statute remains perfectly operational without the grandfather provision, and the zoning, size and height restrictions also function independently." Furthermore, the legislative intent remained intact without the grandfather provision. After slicing off the grandfather language, the court upheld the remaining standards in the new ordinance. "[T]he zoning, size and height restrictions are themselves constitutional because they are content-neutral ‘time, place and manner' restrictions that are ‘justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, … serve a significant governmental interest, and … leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information,'" Fletcher wrote, citing Metromedia, Inc. v. San Diego, 453 U.S. 490 (1981). "We conclude that the appellants' billboards are illegal for one simple reason: They fail to meet the content-neutral zoning, size and height restrictions in both the original ordinance and the new ordinance," Fletcher wrote. The Case: Valley Outdoor, Inc. v. County of Riverside, No. 02-55475, 03 C.D.O.S. 6767, 2003 DJDAR 8539. Filed July 31, 2003. The Lawyers: For Valley Outdoor: Paul E. Fisher, Fisher & Associates, (949) 476-4400. For the county: Randal R. Morrison, Sabine & Morrison