Now informed by the Supreme Court's directives in
Reed, we begin our analysis by considering whether the City's former sign code “applie[d] to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.”
Reed, 135 S.Ct. at 2227. Based on
Reed, we hold that the City's regulation was a content-based restriction of speech. The former sign code exempted governmental or religious flags and emblems, but applied to private and secular flags and emblems. In addition, it exempted “works of art” that “in no way identif[ied] or specifically relate[d] to a product or service,” but it applied to art that referenced a product or service. On its face, the former sign code was content-based because it applied or did not apply as a result of content, that is, “the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.”
Id.;
see also Cahaly, 796 F.3d at 405 (holding South Carolina's anti-robocall statute is content-based regulation because it “applies to calls with a consumer or political message but does not reach calls made for any other purpose”);
Solantic, LLC v. City of Neptune Beach, 410 F.3d 1250, 1264–66 (11th Cir.2005) (applying the same test articulated in
Reed to a city sign code, and holding that an exemption applicable to “flags and insignia only of a ‘government, religious, charitable, fraternal, or other organization’ ” was “plainly content based” because “some types of signs are extensively regulated while others are exempt from regulation based on the nature of the messages they seek to convey”).