Late last month, a district court in Pennsylvania entered an order denying preliminary injunctive relief in a First Amendment case filed by a group of homeless advocates seeking to raise awareness of homelessness in Philadelphia. The case involves three homeless encampments at locations on city- and state-owned properties near Philadelphia’s Center City.  The encampments started in the summer of 2020, and over 200 people reside in them.  The plaintiffs in the case alleged that the…

Last week, the federal Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that an Oklahoma City law prohibiting people from remaining on street medians violated the First Amendment.  The law was challenged by a diverse group, including panhandlers, minority political parties, and even joggers. In 2015, apparently in response to concerns regarding panhandling, Oklahoma City passed a law that prohibited individuals from sitting, standing, or remaining in street medians throughout the city.  Although the law…

Last week, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that the City of Austin, Texas’s sign ordinance was content based and unconstitutional due to the fact it impermissibly distinguished between on-premises and off-premises signs.  The Fifth Circuit’s ruling follows a similar ruling by the Sixth Circuit in a challenge to a Tennessee state law governing billboards, and sets up the possibility of further confusion in the area of billboard regulation. In the…

This post was authored by Otten Johnson summer associate Laura Salter.  Laura is a rising third-year law student at the University of Colorado Law School. In late May, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a Church’s application for injunctive relief from California’s temporary restrictions on religious gatherings in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom. Governor Newsom’s executive order, which parallels mandates issued in several states since March, limited both religious and secular public gatherings in…

In late April, in a case filed by an adult bookstore challenging the application of Kentucky’s Billboard Act to one of its advertisements, a federal judge of the Western District of Kentucky found the entire Billboard Act to violate the First Amendment. Lion’s Den is a chain of adult “superstores” with locations along major highways throughout the Midwestern United States.  At one particular location along I-65 in Kentucky, Lion’s Den affixed one of its billboards…

Last week, in one of the first judicial decisions addressing a First Amendment challenge to state-level social distancing requirements, a federal judge in New Mexico has denied preliminary injunctive relief to a church.  This outcome differs from another recently-decided case in Kentucky, where a district court enjoined enforcement of a city restriction that applied exclusively to drive-in church services. Like most other states, New Mexico has taken significant steps to combat the coronavirus.  These actions…

Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s summary judgment order in order favor of a non-theist group that sought to place a nonreligious display in the rotunda of the Texas state capitol during the holiday season.  The lower court found that the state, in denying the group’s display, had engaged in viewpoint discrimination.  However, the court found that the order granting retrospective relief was improper, but directed the lower…