The First Amendment trumps the council.
Via The Tennessean:
One month after Kid Rock was forced out as grand marshal of the Nashville Christmas parade, the music star is the subject of more controversy in Metro city hall.
This time it’s over a large sign planned for his recently opened Lower Broadway bar, Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N’ Roll Steakhouse.
Why the hubbub?
The soaring 20-foot tall neon sign — not yet installed — will feature a giant guitar with some controversial attributes: The base of the instrument is intentionally shaped like a woman’s buttocks.
The Metro Council late Thursday voted 27-3, with three council members abstaining, to approve the necessary aerial encroachment to allow for the construction and installation of the sign, which was produced by Nashville-based Joslin and Son Signs. Mayor David Briley signed into law the council resolution authorizing the sign on Friday.
Sign ‘crosses the line,’ councilwoman says
But its approval didn’t sit well with several council members, who called the sign tacky and bemoaned that Lower Broadway has steered further away from a place for music and family fun and closer to something that resembles Las Vegas or Branson, Mo.
“We’ve worked very hard as a city to become somewhere that is a tourist destination, an ‘It City,’ somewhere that is family friendly,” said Councilwoman Kathleen Murphy, who was among the three dissenting votes.
Murphy pointed to Nashville’s new trend of more frequently giving exemptions for aerial encroachments for signs. Such approval is needed any time a sign is constructed over a public right of way.
But she said this one enters new terrain.
“This one I feel crosses the line between good taste, family-friendliness, and I think what we would like Nashville to portray to people who come to visit us,” she said. “If we allow this, what is going to come next? I think we can all use our imaginations there.
“Do you think they would allow this type of sign in Leiper’s Fork or Franklin?” Murphy asked, singling out the Williamson County town where Rock served as grand marshal after he was booted from Nashville’s Christmas Parade. “I want us to consider what we want Nashville to look like.”
Rock has First Amendment protections with sign: council attorneyThe other two no voters were At-large Councilman John Cooper, who is considering a run for Nashville mayor, and Councilwoman Antoinette Lee.
Although the margin was lopsided, some of the council members who voted to approve the sign said they did so out of fear of infringing on the bar owners’ First Amendment rights if they objected.
Metro Council attorney Mike Jameson advised the council that First Amendment protections extend to sign regulations by local governments.
“If a local government decides to issue regulations that would constrain the contents of a sign, it has to have a specific governmental interest that it is protecting,” Jameson said. “Prohibitions on purian interests or vulgarity has been deemed to be a legitimate government interest but it is fraught with peril in defining what is obscene.”
As a former councilman from 2003 to 2011, Jameson years ago raised concerns about the name of a local downtown bar, the Wild Beaver Saloon. But Metro allowed the name anyway, and it still exists today.