It’s apparently standard practice for the NFL to demand - and receive - massive concessions from the host city. Included this year was a Clean Zone: a large area of downtown Phoenix in which the NFL (per city ordinance) was given full control of all signage not previously displayed there, starting weeks before the game and ending a week after it.
The NFL claims this is “an important tool in protecting public health, safety and welfare”. A local judge was not persuaded and recently made the (obvious) ruling that this is a First Amendment violation.
In the NFL’s defense I’ll note that it’s at least slightly refreshing when a rich & powerful organization doesn’t try real hard to hide its greed and arrogance.
The NFL isn’t, but the City of Phoenix is. The NFL didn’t put these restrictions in place directly: They asked the city to, and because the city didn’t want to lose the bid, they agreed.
I read the article you linked, and I couldn’t find any evidence that clean zones were an important tool in protecting public health, safety and welfare anywhere in there. It looked like they were created specifically to prevent companies, such as Budweiser, who aren’t the offical whatever of the NFL, from advertising anywhere near the stadium.
I read an article many, many years ago about the Olympics doing the same thing, maybe in Atlanta, and wondering how the hell such a thing was even legal. It seems like the judge in the linked article made a good ruling. No way in hell should the NFL have the power to decide what signs go up in a city.
When it essentially blackmails governments to restrict messaging the NFL doesn’t want to be displayed.
Additionally, since the NFL is essentially a sanctioned private monopoly, there’s probably some anti-trust violation arguments to be made, which, while not a violation of the constitution, is still some shady crap to pull.
It would start three weeks before the game and last until one week after, the resolution read, and banned all “temporary signage … that has not been authorized by the NFL and/or [the Host Committee].”
and
Paulin also filed suit, Thorpe said, because the ordinance gave power that should be the government’s – the approval of permits – to a private business in the NFL or host committee. That meant Paulin suddenly had to ask the NFL, a business based in New York, for permission to sell an ad on a building he owns in downtown Phoenix.
So yes, it sounds exactly like the NFL (or the host committee) could prevent a barber shop from putting up a sign.
No, it sounds like the government agreed to enforce a ban on signs at the behest of the NFL.
If the NFL went around removing signs or issuing fines, they would either be liable for criminal damage or just be ignored.
You can send me cease and desist letters all you want to remove my BLM sign because it offends you. I will just ignore you. If you come to remove it yourself, I’d report vandalism and theft.
If you get the police to remove if for you, the police are violating my first amendment rights, not you.
Ok, we’re getting into semantics. I’d say that if you need to go to the NFL to get a sign approved, and if you don’t that the local police will make you take it down, that’s fairly described as the NFL preventing you from putting up a sign. The deciding agency is just as important as the force who actually removes it.
That’s fine if you want to describe it that way, but the NFL is not violating your first amendment right because only government can do that, and the government IS, regardless of who is telling them to do it.
My take in this is that the NFL isn’t doing anything wrong, but that the city is. A business can ask anyone to do anything, and they can make that a condition of doing business with them. But a government (at least, one under the US Constitution) cannot prohibit the people from putting up signs.
Correct, provided wrong = illegal. But what they are doing is extraordinarily sleazy.
The NFL sees it can derive significant financial advantage from unconstitutional restraints on landowners in a Superbowl host city. The NFL can’t itself impose those restraints, but it can put enormous pressure on local politicians to do so. I’m sure this includes a strong dose of “Don’t worry, we always specify this - just standard practice.”
