No Standing to Attack Permit and Discretionary Sign Rules When Denial Rests on an Unchallenged Billboard Ban

Commentary on New South Media Group, LLC v. City of Rainbow City, Alabama, No. 24-10895 (11th Cir. Nov. 14, 2025)

Introduction

The Eleventh Circuit’s published decision in New South Media Group, LLC v. Rainbow City, Alabama is a crisp and consequential reaffirmation of Article III limits on First Amendment litigation over sign ordinances. New South Media Group (along with two landowners and a local business) applied to erect four expressive signs—featuring flags, artwork, partisan political messages, and special-event notices—on private property in Rainbow City, Alabama. The City denied all applications, expressly invoking its blanket prohibition on new billboards (Section 214) and later denied requested variances.

Instead of challenging the billboard prohibition (Section 214) or the City’s classification of the proposed signs as “billboards,” the plaintiffs brought federal constitutional claims aimed at other parts of the City’s sign code—chiefly, exemptions (Section 213), permit timing, and alleged unbridled discretion scattered across several sections (including Sections 212, 213, 214, 217, 363, and 366). They also advanced a prior-restraint theory tied to the City’s lack of decision deadlines, pointing to a misaddressed denial email that delayed notice by about two months.

The district court dismissed for lack of standing. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, holding that when the City’s actual ground for denial is an unchallenged billboard ban, plaintiffs cannot establish traceability or redressability by attacking other provisions that played no causal role in the denial—and whose invalidation would not yield the requested permits. The panel further declined to reach the plaintiffs’ late-stage factual dispute over whether their signs were, in truth, “billboards” within the code’s definition, noting that issue was neither pleaded nor decided below and is better suited to state court.

Summary of the Opinion

Writing for a unanimous panel (Branch, Abudu, and Kidd, JJ.), Judge Kidd affirmed summary judgment for Rainbow City on jurisdictional grounds:

No Article III standing: Plaintiffs’ injury—the denial of permits and variances—was caused by Section 214’s ban on billboards, a provision the plaintiffs chose not to challenge. As a result, their claims were neither traceable to nor redressable by the constitutional attacks they aimed at other code sections (e.g., exemptions, discretion, timing).
No prior restraint/unbridled discretion standing: Because the City denied the applications under an absolute billboard ban, plaintiffs were not “subject to” the permitting timing and discretion provisions for purposes of Article III. Challenging those provisions in the abstract (or on an overbreadth theory) cannot create standing where the operative denial rests on an independent, unchallenged bar.
No ruling on “billboard” status: The court expressly avoided deciding whether the signs fit the municipal definition of “billboard.” That question was not litigated in the federal complaint, and the district court did not decide it. The panel suggested that dispute belongs in state court.
Disposition: Affirmed dismissal without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction.

Analysis

Precedents Cited and How They Shaped the Decision

Drazen v. Pinto, 74 F.4th 1336 (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc) and TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 141 S. Ct. 2190 (2021): The panel invoked these cases for the familiar Article III elements: injury in fact, traceability, and redressability, and the plaintiff’s burden to establish standing. Here, the injury (permit denials) was clear, but traceability and redressability failed because the denials were based on an unchallenged law (Section 214).
Granite State Outdoor Advertising, Inc. v. City of Clearwater, 351 F.3d 1112 (11th Cir. 2003): A close analogue. There, the plaintiff could challenge the provision that actually caused the denial (the billboard restriction), but lacked standing to attack other sign code provisions that did not cause its injury. The court here emphasized an even more stringent posture: plaintiffs did not challenge Section 214 at all, so none of their constitutional claims targeted the real source of their injury.
KH Outdoor, L.L.C. v. Clay County, 482 F.3d 1299 (11th Cir. 2007): Even if a plaintiff attacks one regulation, redressability fails when an unchallenged, independently sufficient regulation would still bar relief. The court used KH Outdoor to underscore that striking the challenged provisions (permit timing, discretion, or exemptions) would not yield permits because the billboard ban would still foreclose them.
Solantic, LLC v. City of Neptune Beach, 410 F.3d 1250 (11th Cir. 2005): Plaintiffs leaned on Solantic’s condemnation of content-based permitting without time limits. The court distinguished Solantic because the plaintiff there challenged the exact content-based regime used to deny its speech. Here, by contrast, Rainbow City relied on a separate, unchallenged billboard prohibition.
CAMP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. v. City of Atlanta, 451 F.3d 1257 (11th Cir. 2006) and City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publ’g Co., 486 U.S. 750 (1988): These cases underscore that prior-restraint and unbridled-discretion challenges require that the challenged provisions “pertain to” the plaintiff’s activity or that the plaintiff is, or imminently will be, subject to them. Because Section 214 categorically barred the signs as billboards, plaintiffs were never actually subject to the permitting timelines or discretionary approvals they challenged.
Muransky v. Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., 979 F.3d 917 (11th Cir. 2020) (en banc): Cited for the standard of review on standing (de novo) and to confirm the court’s duty to police Article III jurisdiction before reaching the merits.
McCreight v. AuburnBank, 117 F.4th 1322 (11th Cir. 2024): Cited for the summary judgment standard (no genuine dispute of material fact; de novo review), framing the posture in which the standing question was resolved.

Legal Reasoning

The court’s reasoning proceeds from first principles of Article III:

Injury in fact was present. The City denied permits and variances. That concrete denial created a classic injury in fact.
Traceability failed. The record—and plaintiffs’ own concession—showed the denials were explicitly based on Section 214’s billboard prohibition. The provisions plaintiffs challenged (content-based exemptions; lack of timing; discretionary standards) did not cause the denial. As the court summarized, “New South cannot trace its injury to the provisions that it challenges.”
Redressability failed. Even if the court struck down every challenged provision, Section 214 would remain and independently bar the signs. There is no meaningful possibility a favorable court ruling would produce permits. This is classic KH Outdoor: independent, unchallenged law defeats redressability.
Prior restraint and unbridled discretion theories do not bootstrap standing. The Eleventh Circuit’s standing doctrine requires that the allegedly unconstitutional permitting scheme “pertains to” the plaintiff’s activity or that the plaintiff is actually or imminently subject to it. Because Section 214 imposed a categorical bar, the plaintiffs never entered the discretionary or timing-laden regimes they sought to attack. A misaddressed denial email does not transform a categorical denial into a justiciable prior-restraint injury traceable to the absence of deadlines.
Overbreadth does not cure the justiciability defect. Overbreadth permits certain facial challenges, but only when the challenged provisions affect the plaintiff. The court emphasized that nothing in the overbreadth doctrine authorizes litigants to challenge provisions “wholly unrelated to [their] activities.” Here, the only provision that affected plaintiffs was Section 214, which they did not challenge.
No ruling on whether the signs are “billboards.” The district court did not decide whether the proposed signs fit the code’s definition of “billboard,” and the Eleventh Circuit refused to reach that question. The court noted that such a state-law interpretive dispute, untethered to the pleaded federal claims, would be better addressed in state court or in a suit that actually puts Section 214 at issue.

Impact and Implications

This decision tightens the Article III filter in First Amendment challenges to municipal sign ordinances:

Litigant strategy must track the government’s actual ground of decision. If a city denies a sign application on Ground A, plaintiffs must challenge Ground A. Attacking Ground B (even if constitutionally dubious) cannot confer standing unless Ground B caused the injury or its invalidation would plausibly redress it.
Independent, unchallenged restrictions can short-circuit federal speech suits. Municipalities that build clear records specifying a single, independent basis for denial may defeat standing—even in cases alleging serious First Amendment defects elsewhere in the code—unless plaintiffs frame their suits to reach that independent ground.
Overbreadth is not a universal key. The Eleventh Circuit reads overbreadth standing narrowly: litigants cannot leverage third-party standing to attack provisions that do not affect them.
Prior restraint claims require real exposure to the permitting regime. A lack of decision deadlines “by itself” does not create Article III standing where the application is denied on an independent, categorical ground. Administrative mishaps (like a misaddressed email) do not establish traceability to the challenged timing rules.
State-court and as-applied pathways remain important. Plaintiffs contesting whether their proposed signs fit within a “billboard” definition (or challenging the billboard ban itself) must put those issues squarely before the court. The panel’s signpost to state court signals that local-law classification fights can be determinative and should not be sidestepped.

In practical terms, counsel for sign companies should:

Identify and challenge the precise provision cited in the denial letter or written decision.
Plead alternative claims: as-applied and facial challenges to the independent ground; in the alternative, a declaratory claim that the proposal does not fall within the cited definition (here, “billboard”).
Develop a record showing that, but for the challenged provisions, approval would likely issue—thus satisfying redressability even if other provisions exist.

Municipal counsel should:

Anchor denials in discrete, independent, and defensible provisions, and document that basis cleanly.
Recognize that while this strategy can defeat standing, it also places legal weight on the constitutionality and interpretation of the cited independent provision (here, Section 214).

Complex Concepts Simplified

Article III standing: To sue in federal court, a plaintiff must show (1) a concrete injury, (2) caused by the defendant’s challenged action (traceability), and (3) likely to be fixed by a favorable court ruling (redressability).
Traceability: The injury must be linked to the specific law or action the plaintiff is challenging, not to some other law left unchallenged.
Redressability: Striking down the challenged law must likely help the plaintiff. If another, unchallenged law would still block the plaintiff, redressability fails.
Prior restraint: Government rules that require permission before speaking can violate the First Amendment—especially if they lack time limits or clear standards. But the plaintiff must actually be subject to that permission regime to challenge it.
Unbridled discretion: Permit systems that give officials standardless discretion to approve or deny speech are suspect. Again, litigants must be subject to that discretionary regime to have standing to challenge it.
Overbreadth doctrine: Allows some facial challenges to speech restrictions because overly broad laws chill others’ speech. Still, the challenged provisions must affect the plaintiff; overbreadth is not a license to litigate unrelated parts of the code.
Facial vs. as-applied challenges: A facial challenge attacks a law in all or most of its applications; an as-applied challenge attacks the law’s application to the plaintiff. When a denial rests on a single, independent provision, an as-applied challenge to that provision is often necessary.
Independent, sufficient ground: If the government cites one rule that alone justifies its action, a plaintiff must address that rule; otherwise, even winning on other issues won’t change the outcome.

Conclusion

New South Media Group clarifies and reinforces a straightforward but potent rule: in First Amendment challenges to sign regulations, Article III requires a tight fit between the claimed injury and the provisions under attack. Where a city denies permits under a categorical, unchallenged billboard ban, plaintiffs cannot manufacture standing by challenging other parts of the code—such as exemptions, discretion, or timing—because those provisions neither caused the injury nor could their invalidation redress it.

The opinion’s significance is both doctrinal and practical. Doctrinally, it harmonizes Eleventh Circuit standing cases like Granite State and KH Outdoor with speech-specific doctrines like prior restraint and overbreadth, insisting on concrete exposure to the challenged regime. Practically, it instructs litigants to engage the actual ground of denial—by contesting the applicability or constitutionality of the independent provision (here, Section 214)—and signals that state-court interpretive fights over local definitions may be outcome determinative.

The takeaway is clear: to litigate speech claims in federal court, plead the controversy you truly have. When a billboard ban causes the injury, that is the controversy that must be joined.

No Standing to Attack Permit and Discretionary Sign Rules When Denial Rests on an Unchallenged Billboard Ban — Commentary on New South Media Group, LLC v. Rainbow City, Alabama (11th Cir. Nov. 14, 2025)