LA wins a billboard battle

[Commentary] After years of being pushed around by billboard bullies, Los Angeles has begun to man up.

Its latest step away from wimp status was marked Wednesday by a federal appeals court ruling upholding the city's power to ban so-called supergraphics as well as billboards that face freeways. Until now, sign companies have rubbed Los Angeles' own laws in its face. They claimed that when the city allowed a few new signs to be visible from a freeway, it violated the 1st Amendment by supposedly favoring one or two commercial "speakers" and thus invalidated its entire regulatory scheme. Billboard companies ran rampant, ignoring city laws and daring City Hall to stop them. For too long, L.A. tried to talk its way out by giving up a little here and a little more there, but that only made the city weaker in the eyes of the companies. Things changed last year when City Atty. Carmen Trutanich began enforcing billboard ordinances and making it clear he would defend the city in court.

In August, the City Council adopted a temporary ban on new signs while it waited to see what the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would do. Now the court has put the city back in charge of its own landscape by upholding its discretion, through land-use legislation, to designate certain areas as appropriate for signage and other areas as sign-free.