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\. ~ ~ · Thursday/March 25/1993/$tar Tribune 1tigh court Strikes down ~-cincinnati news-rack ban W..Jüuaton Post ....biDaton, D.C. ~e Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a ban on commercial I news racks imposed by Cincinnati, 1 declaring that the city's interest in nicer-lookiD¡ and safer sidewalks did not justify the infringement on the advertisers' ftee..speech righ&s. At is- It.. were newspaper-type vending machines that dispense free advertis- : ~_ magazines, not newspapers. , 10 : The 6-3 ruling in Cincinnati vs. Dis- : còvery Network strongly affirmed I First Amendment protection for I C<Jmmercial advertising. Overall, it matces it harder for government to ! ièjulate billboards, commercial pub- I Illations and other advertising. , -I While Justice Jobn Paul Stevens .stressed in his majority opinion that its effects were narrow, he nonethe- ~ reversed the tenor of recent rul- inp by emphasízing that Cincinnati wfungly presumed a '·Iow value" for commercial speech meriting less pro- ~on than '<POlitical" speech and Qtl\er. forms of noncommercial ex- f¡iêsslon. "I: 'Ale dispute bepn three years ago ~en Cincinnati invoked an ordi- nance banning "commercial hand- biDs" to try to get rid of vending tlðxes containing promotional map- zines. At the same time, Cincinnati , f j , ¡ } ¡ said boxes containing traditional newspapers could stay on the streets. Discovery Network Inc., which puts out a free magazine of educational and social propams available in Cin- cinnati, and Hannon Publishing Co., which advertises real estate in nu- merous communities, challenged the ordinance as an inñingement of the First Amendment. City officials said the boxes were un- sightly and dangerously cluttered the sidewalks. They said they targeted only the 62 commercial boxes and not close to 2,000 newspaper boxes on city sidewalks because newspapers traditionally have merited greater First Amendment protection. Originally, the court said speech in- volving commercial transactions was outside the First Amendment. In the mid-1970s, however, the court began strilcing down state and local laws asainst some advertising that con- veyed important consumer informa- tion. In 1976, the court explicitly recognized constitutional protection for commercial speech, while still permitting it to be subjected to great- er government regulation than non- commercial speech. In this case the court agreed with lower federal courts, which had ruled apinst Cincinnati, that the benefit from removing 62 boxes out of close to 2,000 was small.