From today's opinion by the Minnesota Court of Appeals in Johnsonville, LLC v. City of Buffalo, written by Judge Sarah Wheelock and joined by Presiding Judge Jeffrey Bryan and Judge Lucinda Jesson:
In early 2021, Johnsonville displayed a 30-by-50-foot flag saying, "TRUMP 2020 Keep America Great," from atop a mobile construction crane on its agricultural zone in Buffalo. The city attorney issued three notices of administrative penalties to Johnsonville in April 2021 for violations of multiple provisions of chapter 13 of the Buffalo City Code (the sign ordinance or ordinance) because of the flag's size and manner of display. The notices imposed penalties for flying the flag from an extended crane on the property and for exceeding size restrictions deemed applicable to the flag….
[A.] [Johnsonville also] argues that because the sign ordinance permits larger holiday signs, the ordinance is not content neutral, and accordingly the sign ordinance's size restrictions must be subjected to strict scrutiny review, which the ordinance's content-based restrictions cannot withstand. {The holiday-signs provision allows the display of signs that "contain or depict a message pertaining to a religious, national, state or local holiday and no other matter" without an explicit limitation on size.} …
