Every election season the ACLU of Michigan learns about local officials ordering homeowners to remove political signs from their yard, and this year was no different. In September 2020 a man in West Branch who had a sign on his own property that said “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings” was charged with violating a criminal statute that prohibits “exhibiting obscene matter within view of children.” We wrote a letter to the prosecutor explaining that the charges were a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Within days the prosecution was dropped. Then, following the acrimonious 2020 presidential election in which President Trump and his supporters continued to contest the results for months after the election was over, many homeowners who displayed political signs in their yard before the election decided to keep them up. Some cities and townships, however, threatened to enforce local ordinances that require political signs to be removed within a few days after an election.
In November 2020 we wrote letters to city officials in Berkley, Bloomfield Hills, and Grosse Pointe Farms, advising them that their ordinances are unconstitutional because they treat political speech less favorably than non-political signs that do not have such restrictions. In response, the cities agreed to stop enforcing their ordinances and plan to revise them.
(ACLU Attorneys Dan Korobkin, Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, and Syeda Davidson; Cooperating Attorney Jennifer Grieco of Altior Law.)