A local ordinance in Radford, Virginia prohibits the display of any fraternity or sorority letters (such as these) on houses in the university district.
Regulations for signs can be found in most city and county ordinances. Usually they involve safety and across-the-board zoning restrictions
Until the 1960s, the major question was whether governments could regulate signs for aesthetic issues. For example, could billboards be taken down from a highway for a beautification project? The answer, as the law developed over time, was yes.
But then, what about issues of content and context? Could all non-commercial signs be banned from private land, or from public land, and under what circumstances? How should the constitution’s separation of church and state affect religious displays on public land?
The principles developed for sign and advertising regulation over the years generally involve a “strict scrutiny” requirement that regulations be content neutral, and that these regulations be narrowly tailored to serve a specific government interest. In other words, the regs cant target one group or set of ideas. They can’t just be any old set of regulations for the convenience of the realtors at the country club.
One good example of a “content neutral” approach to regulation is Ward v Rock Against Racism (1989), in which complaints about excessive noise from Central Park rock concerts did not lead to banning that particular concert, but rather, requiring better audio engineering.
Cases where people want to express political views on roadside signs come up all the time, for example here and here. Almost always, the local courts side with the First Amendment perspective or are corrected on appeal.
Most recently, a 2015 Supreme Court case involving signs leading to a church in Gilbert, Arizona led to a decision that content based sign regulations must survive a “strict scrutiny” test. In Reed v Town of Gilbert, the court said that strict scrutiny standards should always be applied when a law is content-based on its face.
In some backwater localities where no one tests questionable laws in court, ordinances frequently crop up that appear unconstitutional, and in need of court challenge. Such would appear to be the case for a Radford Va city ordinance banning fraternity and sorority signs. The ordinance has been controversial since it first passed in 2007, but was still in effect in 2022 and is enforced with the help of Radford University.
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The American Planning Association has a good summary of the First Amendment issues associated with municipal sign ordinances.
Article about Reed v Town of Gilbert, Washington Post, June 18, 2015
Guide to political sign laws from Signs.com