The advertising companies contended that the city had allowed some digital signage such as that on the Austin Convention Center, and believed the ban was unconstitutional.

They were joined by the Austin Police Association and supporters of local emergency services, believing that such digital billboards could be used to provide information such as Amber Alerts.

[4] Though the city amended the sign code in 2017 after litigation had started, the changes did not impact the case nor render it moot.

The majority opinion by Sotomayor, held that Austin's on/off premises regulation was written as content neutral under Reed, and thus should be reviewed through a facial challenge rather than strict scrutiny.

[6] Justice Breyer wrote a separate concurrence that argued that Reed's decision that applied strict scrutiny was wrong to begin with, and that instead there would be a better solution that used a measure of common sense in making the judgment if such regulations discriminated on content.

Thomas argued that the on/off premise regulation was content-based, since these messages would be likely to promote on or off-site services, and thus was unconstitutional through a strict scrutiny review under Reed as well as Hill v.