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I’ve been following Mimi’s thread about the timing and regulation of lawn signs on Left in Lowell, which is up to 20 comments now. Some people think that signs are simply a free speech issue and others think they ought to be controlled at least a bit. Apparently the Supreme Court disagrees and not just the current court:  in 1994, a Missouri city law prohibiting lawn signs was struck down and lower courts have used this case as a precedent in challenging any regulation of political signs. What surprises me is how long the Supreme Court decision can take to filter down through all the courts.  For some reason I thought a Supreme Court ruling immediately becomes the law of the land, but it doesn’t appear to be so. As Mimi points out Lowell still has an ordinance on the zoning book dated April 3, 2007 that declares that political signs must be temporary, with temporary defined as 30 days or less.  Maybe it takes the ACLU or other challenger to enforce the rulings of the higher court. (Perhaps a lawyer could comment on this?) The excellent First Amendment Center website has a timeline of such challenges from 1994 through September 2006, and in every case the challenger won.  Meanwhile in Lowell, more »