The Town of Gilbert, Arizona, required permits for outdoor signs but created separate rules for ideological, political, and temporary directional messages. Good News Community Church and its pastor, Clyde Reed, were cited because their signs announcing the time and location of Sunday services exceeded the short display period allowed for temporary directional signs. The district court granted summary judgment to the Town, and the Ninth Circuit treated the sign categories as content neutral. The Supreme Court reversed. It held that a law is content based on its face when officials must examine the message, topic, or purpose of speech to determine which restrictions apply. Gilbert’s Code treated signs differently based on whether they announced a religious event, an election, or an ideological message, so it was facially content based and subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the Town’s benign motive or asserted interests in aesthetics and traffic safety. The distinctions were underinclusive and did not further a compelling interest through narrow tailoring. The Court emphasized that municipalities remain free to regulate content-neutral features such as size, materials, lighting, placement, and portability. Justice Alito concurred with examples of permissible rules. Justices Breyer and Kagan concurred in the judgment but criticized an automatic strict-scrutiny trigger for every subject-matter distinction. The judgment was reversed and remanded.