Reed v. Town of Gilbert and the Secondary Effects Doctrine

    In Reed v. Town of Gilbert the Court unanimously struck down Gilbert, Arizona’s Sign Code, as applied to Clyde Reed and his Good News Church.  The Sign Code distinguished between ideological, political, and directional signs, treating the first category most favorably, the second somewhat less so, and imposed stringent limits on the third category. Reed’s church was a moveable event and each weekend he posted signs to direct the flock to the right place, but he put them up too soon and left them up too long to conform to the Code. A majority concluded that the Code was content-based on its face and thus subject to strict scrutiny.  Applying that standard the majority held that even if community aesthetics and traffic safety were compelling objectives, the law was so underinclusive as to fail the necessary prong of strict scrutiny.  A concurrence by Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, and Breyer argued that strict scrutiny ought to apply when the government has either sought to curtail the marketplace of ideas or has acted to squelch a disfavored viewpoint.  Otherwise, said the concurrence, intermediate scrutiny ought to apply to sign ordinances that, while perhaps content-based, fail to implicate either of those two concerns.
    So, what effect does Reed have on the secondary effects doctrine?  In a series of cases, notably City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, the Court has treated zoning laws that single out pornography purveyors for less favorable treatment as if they were content-neutral regulations and thus subject to intermediate scrutiny. Did Reed overrule Renton without saying so? Or is the secondary effects doctrine still robust because the government’s motive is to curb the pernicious secondary effects of porno shops?  If so, why is non-obscene pornography entitled to less protection than signs guiding guests to a beer keg party? Taken at face value, the majority opinion in Reed suggests that the secondary effects doctrine is in danger.