News Highlights

• Proposed rewrite of the zoning rules for signs will focus on making them "content-neutral" in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

In light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Fairfax County is moving to update its zoning rules for signs.

Zoning officials are working to rewrite the existing regulations in a “content-neutral” manner to respond to the highest court’s ruling. The effort also will reorganize the existing rules into a more user friendly format.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors directed staff to work on the development of these proposed zoning changes that they must ultimately approve.

The 2015 court case involved an Arizona town that regulated signs based on their content or message, as do many local jurisdictions around the country. The court ruled that these “content-based” regulations do not meet the strict scrutiny test required by the First Amendment to protect free speech.

However, Fairfax County’s current ordinance regulates some signs based, in whole or part, on the message on them, requiring them to be rewritten.

For example, the rules for freestanding building identification signs in office and industrial parks are content based as they say: “Such sign(s) shall be limited to identifying the name of the building and/or the individual enterprises located therein, the address, trademark or identifying symbol or any combination thereof.”

The revisions will primarily focus on updating the rules for temporary, prohibited, and exempt signs since these are the areas with the most content-based language.

County officials will seek public input on these suggested changes beginning in August. The proposal must undergo review by the Planning Commission, which is anticipated to hold a public hearing late this fall, with a board hearing on any changes anticipated in the beginning of 2018.

The county is undertaking the zoning revisions for signs as part of its project to modernize its zoning ordinance, known as zMod.

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