7th Circuit - First Amendment - Billboards - Variances First, tip of the hat to Dirk Stahl in Evansville, Indiana for passing this case along and best wishes to him as he litigates similar issues. A billboard company GEFT sought to build a digital billboard that violated various size regulations of Monroe County. GEFT then sought relief from the BZA and was denied. It sued asserting a host of constitutional rights associated with speech denial in the county's regulations. The lower court issued an injunction against enforcement of portions of the county's zoning ordinance because some of the ordinance differentiated between commercial and non-commercial speech. It also enjoined the county's variance procedure that applied despite having little direct application to speech. In a great win, the county was able to reverse the lower court's decision that affected its variance procedure while losing on the commercial/non-commercial speech ruling. You'll need to read the opinion if you have an interest in this area to capture all the details and analysis. Long story short, the panel concluded that the variance procedure did not give so much discretion to the board as would make it violative of the constitution. For those handling these cases, my recollection is that the history of the variance was that it was included in the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act to prevent unconstitutional takings or applications of the law to individual properties. GEFT vs. Monroe County processWebInputExternal.pl (uscourts.gov)<http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/OpinionsWeb/processWebInputExternal.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2023/D03-09/C:22-1004:J:Scudder:aut:T:fnOp:N:3013431:S:0> Charles W. Thompson, Jr. Of Counsel P: (202) 466-5424 x7110 M: (240) 876-6790 D: (202) 742-1016 [facebook icon]<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalMunicipalLawyersAssociation/>[twitter icon]<https://twitter.com/imlalegal>[linkedin icon]<https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-municipal-lawyers-association-inc./> [logo]<https://imla.org/> 51 Monroe St. Suite 404 Rockville, MD, 20850 www.imla.org<http://www.imla.org/> Plan Ahead! IMLA's 2022 Mid-Year Seminar<https://imla.org/seminars/>, April 8-11, 2022 in Washington, D.C.! IMLA's 2022 Annual<https://imla.org/annual-conference/> Conference, October 19-23, 2022 in Portland, OR! Check out our On-Demand webinar library<https://netforum.avectra.com/eweb/shopping/shopping.aspx?site=imla&webcode=shopping&cart=0&shopsearchCat=Merchandise&productCat=Webinar> with 100+ webinars at your fingertips.