NJ's Top Court Sides with 10-Foot Inflatable Rodent, Strikes Sign Ordinance
Ruling yesterday on free-speech grounds, the New Jersey Supreme Court said a municipal ordinance banning a labor union from displaying a 10-foot-tall inflatable rat at protest sites was a violation of its First Amendment rights.
A divided appeals court had previously sided with Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, after the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 269 was fined $133 for violating the municipality’s sign ordinance, reports the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger.
“The challenged ordinance virtually eliminates all signs except for grand openings of businesses and other minor exceptions,” the high court justices explained in their written opinion yesterday. “The township’s elimination of an entire medium of expression without a readily available alternative renders the ordinance overbroad.”
The ruling is significant because of the widespread use of such rodents by unions throughout the country going back to at least 1990, when a Chicago union asked an outdoor advertiser to come up with a way to catch public attention at protest sites, the newspaper writes. “The Jersey rat gets out about 50 times a year.”
Attorney Andrew Watson represented the labor union, and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed a supporting brief in the case.
The township plans to rewrite its sign ordinance to comply with the ruling, says John Dember, a lawyer for the municipality.
