A Vermont dairy family has been issued a notice by their town demanding that they obtain a building permit because they have more than two political yard signs (that support GOP candidates) displayed on their property. Rather than pay the $25 fee (plus 3% for credit cards) to comply, young newlyweds Sara and Ryan Bullis pulled the small signs from the ground and attached them to the side of a truck trailer stacked with hay bales.
Yard Signs of the Times
The Bullis family has milked cows in scenic Grand Isle, VT, for four generations. Their business name captures the idyllic beauty of their home: Savage View Farm. A complaint posted on an online community bulletin board (allegedly by a seasonal summer resident) about yard signs appears to have sparked the administrative response from the town of North Hero. The neighbors of Bullis farm display numerous Democratic candidate signs: It is unclear whether they obtained the requisite “building permit” to stick the small political campaign signs in the ground.
Vermont famously banned billboards in 1968. State law restricts political campaign signs like those on the Bullis farm and their neighbours' from being too close to the road (to ensure safety and view) and restricts them to election season. Vermont’s state laws are narrowly tailored and do not extend into what Vermonters can display on their barns, their living room walls, or land not within the regulated setback. North Hero’s building permit requirement stretches a more intrusive hand than the state, and farmers like the Bullis family will not be bullied.
The community post condemning yard signs also mirrored what appears to be widespread societal ignorance of fundamental free speech guarantees. The post targeted yard signs for a list of grievances: They are ineffective, environmentally harmful, could incur legal fines (at least in North Hero), create “visual clutter,” and – woe to Vermont voters – pose a “potential for divisiveness”:
“Displaying political yard signs can sometimes lead to tension or conflict between neighbors with differing political views. This can contribute to a polarizing atmosphere within communities.”
Free Speech Prevails
Such sentiments display a desire – or an actual call – for government (in this case, a small town whose zoning administrator was hired in April) to stifle citizens’ most basic liberty so that they won’t be exposed to differences of political preference during an election year when the opinions of candidates and voters are supposed to be paramount. Perhaps when citizens broach their political concerns to legislators (such as about a property tax increase of 25% or more in many Vermont towns in 2024), it creates a “polarizing atmosphere.”
There is even greater irony in the idea of using aesthetics to negate free speech: to exploit Green Mountain scenic views as justification for silencing locals’ political views. How dare these “deplorable” farmers botch the tourist view for which their skyrocketing taxes have paid? Vermont’s 1968 billboard legislation exempts signs smaller than 150 square feet, and state officials take no position on its potential application to mobile signage such as those employed by Savage View Farm to continue expressing the family’s political views directly to their neighbors.
Vermont’s aesthetic ironies don’t stop here, though. The state is all in for solar panel arrays, which have poisoned the view and usurped much fertile farmland without any political messaging other than the visible hypocrisy. Solar panels pollute horribly, not just as eyesores but in their manufacturing and disposal – an exponentially greater threat than yard signs in coal and energy consumption and ecotoxin generation. Those chemical pollutants may be invisible to tourists driving EVs (which generate 30-50% more toxic rubber dust than gas-powered cars, accounting for 78% of ocean microplastic pollution), but the solar panels are plain to see.
Foreign corporations collect state and federal subsidies to plant ugly rows of toxic solar panels in the Green Mountains, while summer residents use local ordinances to silence the political views of those who might object. The US Constitution was created to prevent exactly this type of bullying, and it will remain a bulwark against delusional ideologues who object to constructive criticism, scientific facts, or their neighbors’ audacity to publicly express their opinions.
An Unheroic Vermont Town
The town of North Hero will perhaps have a difficult legal row to hoe if it proceeds against rebellious newlywed farmers Sara and Ryan Bullis. Constitutionally, it is hard to see how any town can justify push-in yard sign regulation under a building code – what’s next, the dogcatcher rounding up horses and cows for flatulence? Property assessors inspecting basements for verboten political signage? Road crews scraping political stickers off car bumpers? This ordinance is obvious government overreach, running afoul of established constitutional law.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas summed up the legal view of the importance of political speech practiced by these dairy farmers in Reed v Town of Gilbert, Arizona:
“Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech. That is why the First Amendment expressly targets the operation of the laws — i.e., the “abridg[ement] of speech”—rather than merely the motives of those who enacted them.”
Some residents are not convinced this Vermont town’s motives were innocent. The town clerk’s husband is running for State Senate as a Democrat against some of the Republicans whose signs graced the Bullis farm. North Hero’s zoning administrator has stated that only one “friendly letter” has been issued, and that the town clerk was not involved in the decision, which was “not an official notice of violation,” merely a request “to come into compliance with the town’s regulations by obtaining a permit.”
As the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, it is not the burden of citizens to prove bad intent: The dangers of censorship must be prevented for those who one day might. Vermonters must be allowed to communicate freely with their community.
