Signs of the times

The city of Lynnwood has revised its zoning regulations regarding business signs in an effort to comply with a 2006 federal court decision.

Sign regulations were the subject of five years of hearings and work sessions from 1996 to 2000. In 2002, the council updated its rules governing how and where small business signs can be displayed.

But in 2003, Redmond’s Blazing Bagels sued the city of Redmond, which had prohibited the company from advertising its business with sandwich boards on sidewalks.

In 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman concurred with Blazing Bagels. The city of Redmond appealed the case to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, one step removed from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In its September 2006 decision, the appeals court sided with the bagel business in ruling that Redmond’s sign regulations were unconstitutional because the city allowed some commercial signs but not others.

John Deraspe is a partner with Epic Design, LLC of Redmond, which owns Futon Factory of Lynnwood.

Deraspe said the Institute for Justice, a non-profit Libertarian legal foundation, sued both the city of Redmond in the Blazing Bagels case and the city of Lynnwood, which had regulations similar to Redmond’s.

Deraspe said Lynnwood police had been ticketing Futon Factory employees who wore sandwich boards advertising the store as they walked the sidewalk. When he complained to the city in 2004, Deraspe said he was laughed at.

“I don’t like being laughed at,” Deraspe said.

Bill Maurer, executive director of the Institute for Justice’s Washington chapter, said his organization filed the civil rights lawsuit to get Lynnwood’s sign law ruled unconstitutional.

Instead of fighting the lawsuit, the city of Lynnwood agreed to change its sign law, said city attorney Michael Roark.

“It’s simply to keep in line with federal law,” he said.

Lynnwood and the Institute for Justice reached an agreement that, effectively, caused the lawsuit to be dismissed.

“To give Lynnwood credit, once the (9th Circuit) decision came out, they recognized their sign code couldn’t stand,” Maurer said. “The government can’t pick and choose what kind of message is more important to get to the public than others.”

Maurer said the institute’s aim in the case was to make sure businesses received the same free speech consideration as any individual would.

“One of our concentrations is on commercial speech and getting the public to recognize that communicating about commercial speech is as important as communicating about artists or political ideas,” Maurer said.