During the Presidential race last year, many individuals exercised their First Amendment right to free speech by displaying signs advertising their chosen candidate. Yet as one Army officer found, residents in the Borough of Haddon Heights, New Jersey were forbidden to display political signs on their lawns, according to a borough ordinance.
After being informed that the ACLU-NJ was preparing to file a lawsuit seeking an emergency injunction against implementation of the ordinance, the Borough agreed not to enforce the political sign ban.
""While speaking now as an individual citizen rather than as an Army officer, I find it absurd that I've been deployed around the world to defend freedom and civil rights, only to have one of the most basic civil rights -- the right to free speech -- denied to me right here at home," said Steven Kressel, currently a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserves and who has been with Special Operations since 1987. Mr. Kressel's most recent deployment was in Iraq, from which he returned earlier this year.
On October 27, 2004, Kressel returned to his home in Haddon Heights, from serving that day as an Honor Guard for a funeral for a World War II veteran, to find that the police had come to his home and informed his wife that the sign in support of John Kerry on the Kressel's front lawn violated a Borough ban on political signs and would have to come down. When Kressel contacted the Haddon Heights clerk the next day, he learned of Haddon Heights' ban on political signs throughout the town, including in residential districts. On Friday, October 29, 2004, he contacted the ACLU-NJ seeking assistance. The ACLU-NJ immediately informed counsel for Haddon Heights that it would file suit on Monday morning, November 1, 2004, challenging the ordinance. On Saturday, the ACLU-NJ received word from the Borough's attorney that it would not enforce the ordinance and Kressel could replace his sign.
The Haddon Heights' political sign ban violates the right to free speech both under the United States Constitution and the New Jersey Constitution. The total prohibition on political signs in the Borough does not serve a legitimate purpose and restricts speech, especially by precluding the time-honored right of Americans to express political messages through the placement of signs on their lawns. Additionally, the ordinance impermissibly grants greater protection to commercial speech than to political speech, as other types of signs are permitted in residential districts, including real estate signs, church signs, and signs promoting events. Although the Borough agreed not to enforce the political sign ban, unless that portion of the ordinance is formally repealed, the ACLU-NJ will still file a lawsuit.
""New Jersey's towns need to know that overreaching limitations on lawn signs are unconstitutional and that the ACLU-NJ is ready to defend the public's rights against such restrictions,"" stated ACLU-NJ Legal Director Edward Barocas, who previously obtained an injunction against the Borough of Franklin Lakes for restricting the use of political lawn signs. ""Especially in the midst of a national election, the right to freedom of speech must be zealously protected.""