Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155 (2015), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified when municipalities may impose content-based restrictions on signage.

[5] Some analysts have also suggested that the case left open several important questions within First Amendment jurisprudence that may be re-litigated in future years.

[15] First, "ideological signs", which contained "a message or ideas for noncommercial purposes", could be up to twenty square feet in size and could be placed in any "zoning district" for any length of time.

"[30] At a subsequent status conference after the appellate court decision, the parties decided to resolve all the issues on summary judgment, rather than via new preliminary injunction motions.

[33] Based on its determination that the ordinance was content-neutral, the Ninth Circuit "applied a lower level of scrutiny to the Sign Code" and held it did not violate the First Amendment.

[38] Rather, he emphasized that "[a] law that is content-based on its face is subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the government’s benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of 'animus toward the ideas contained' in the regulated speech".

[39][A] Justice Thomas explained that "innocent motives" do not eliminate the danger of censorship, because governments may one day use content-based laws to regulate "disfavored speech".

[36] Additionally, Justice Thomas rejected the town's assertion that a law is only content-based if it "censor[s] or favor[s]" specific viewpoints or ideas.

[42] Furthermore, he also rejected the Ninth Circuit's conclusion that the ordinance was content-neutral because it targeted specific classes of speakers, rather than the content of their speech.

[47] Justice Thomas also suggested that some directional signs "may be essential, both for vehicles and pedestrians, to guide traffic or to identify hazards and ensure safety".

[50] However, Justice Alito wrote separately to emphasize that the Court's opinion would not "prevent cities from regulating signs in a way that fully protects public safety and serves legitimate aesthetic objectives".

[52] Justice Stephen Breyer wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which he argued that content-based discrimination should be considered a "rule of thumb, rather than as an automatic 'strict scrutiny' trigger, leading to almost certain legal condemnation".

[54] Therefore, he concluded that a rule triggering strict scrutiny for all cases involving content-based restrictions would be a "recipe for judicial management of ordinary government regulatory activity".

[64] David A. Cortman, counsel for Good News Community Church, said the Court's ruling was an "important victory for all the little guys who have ever found their speech silenced by the strong arm of government".

"[66] However, other commentators criticized the majority opinion's methodology; Hadley Arkes, for example, wrote that the Court's decision "revealed the unlovely spectacle of the conservatives talking themselves ever deeper into a genuine moral relativism in the regulation of speech".

[68] Lyle Denniston, for example, suggested that after the Court issued its decisions in Reed and Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, "the meaning of the First Amendment, in general, became somewhat more confusing".