Iowa man fights to keep yard sign

The Associated Press

12.07.99

Printer-friendly page

CORALVILLE, Iowa — The Iowa Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against the city on behalf of a man who was ordered to remove a yard sign protesting the rerouting of a neighborhood bus line.

Marty Hathaway said he received a letter in mid-November from James Kessler, the city's acting building and zoning official, ordering him to remove his sign.

The letter, delivered by a Coralville police officer, said Hathaway would face a $500 penalty for not moving the sign by 8 a.m. the next day and a $750 fine for each additional day the sign remained on his property.

"It comes down to one thing — freedom of speech," Hathaway said. "I feel I was bullied into squelching my opinion."

ICLU Legal Director Randall C. Wilson said the lawsuit filed on Dec. 3 claims the city's actions clearly violate the First Amendment.

"Yard signs are a well-established and traditional form of protest," he said.

Coralville's city ordinances prohibit in-ground signs in residential districts, except for real estate signs, garage sale signs, construction signs and political signs under certain circumstances, says Assistant City Attorney Kirstene Diehl.

Political signs must not be erected earlier than 30 days prior to the date of the election for the candidate or the issue on the sign, according to the code.

"Under our definition, Mr. Hathaway's sign didn't appear to qualify," Diehl said.

But the city has no right to decide what kinds of political speech it will or won't allow, Wilson says.

"The government can't pick and choose whose speech it likes and whose speech it doesn't," he said.

The ICLU won a 1996 court ruling concerning a Marshalltown man's sign critical of hog confinements.

"The battle for civil liberties is never fully won," Wilson said. "You just have to keep defending them."

The sign in Hathaway's front yard, painted on a 4-by-8-foot piece of plywood, said: "Stop the Buses, Save the Street." Below the slogan was the address for a Web site Hathaway had created.

A regular city bus route was detoured past Hathaway's home last year because of construction, but the city decided in June to make the change permanent.

Since then, many residents have asked that the route be moved back because of damage to the asphalt street. Hathaway says two buses drive by his house every half-hour.

"We have to be free as a city to run the buses on the best streets, and it could be anyone's street," said Roger Fisher, the Coralville transit operations manager.

Fisher said the rerouting allowed bus drivers to avoid a dangerous turn.