Meet the People Behind Monday’s Supreme Court Argument (Reed v. Town of Gilbert)

How wonderful are Clyde and Ann Reed?  Meet the couple who’s case was argued in front of the Supreme Court Monday by the Alliance Defending Freedom:

Good News Community Church, led by Pastor Clyde Reed, is a small church in Gilbert, Arizona. Each week the church rents space in a temporary location and uses small, temporary signs to invite and direct the community to those services.

While the Town of Gilbert’s sign code broadly permits a dizzying array of political, ideological, and other types of signs, it severely restricts signs inviting people to a church’s services. These restrictions impose strict limits on the size, location, number, and duration of the church’s signs. Under the code, political signs can be up to 32 square feet and displayed for 5 months, but church signs can only be 6 feet and displayed for a mere 12 hours prior to the service and 1 hour afterwards.

This means that the church can’t put up its signs until 9:00 p.m. because its services are at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays. Therefore, not only is the church’s sign hard to read because it’s so small, it’s also dark outside for much of the time it’s up. It also means that after the church service, Pastor Reed must choose between picking up his signs to avoid enforcement of the code or ministering to his congregation and facing punishment from the Town of Gilbert, which could include fines or even jail time.

Find out more about their case here (which was argued by David Cortman) and watch their sweet story below.

Go, Clyde, Ann, and ADF!

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