PENNSYLVANIA, USA — A Jewish family had the free-speech right to blanket their yard with signs decrying hate and racism after their next-door neighbor hurled an antisemitic slur at them during a property dispute 10 years ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled.
The court decided Simon and Toby Galapo were exercising their rights under the Pennsylvania Constitution when they erected protest signs on their property and pointed them squarely at the neighbor's house in the Philadelphia suburbs — a total of 23 signs over a span of years — with messages such as “Hitler Eichmann Racists,” “No Place 4 Racism” and “Woe to the Racists. Woe to the Neighbors.”
"All homeowners at one point or another are forced to gaze upon signs they may not like on their neighbors’ property — be it ones that champion a political candidate, advocate for a cause, or simply express support or disagreement with some issue," Justice Kevin Dougherty wrote for the court's 4-2 majority. He said suppressing such speech would “mark the end to residential expression.”
In a dissent, Justice Kevin Brobson said judges have the authority to “enjoin residential speech ... that rises to the level of a private nuisance and disrupts the quiet enjoyment of a neighbor’s home.”
The neighbors’ ongoing feud over a property boundary and “landscaping issues" came to a head in November 2014 when a member of the Oberholtzer family directed an antisemitic slur at Simon Galapo, according to court documents. By the following June, the Galapo family had put up what would be the first of numerous signs directed at the Oberholtzer property.
The Oberholtzers filed suit, seeking an order to prohibit their neighbors from erecting signs “containing false, incendiary words, content, innuendo and slander.” They alleged the protest signs were defamatory, placed the family in a false light and constituted a nuisance. One member of the family, Frederick Oberholzer Jr., testified that all he could see were signs out his back windows.
Simon Galapo testified that he wanted to make a statement about antisemitism and racism, teach his children to fight it, and change his neighbors’ behavior.
The case went through appeals after a Montgomery County judge decided the Galapo family could keep their signs, but ordered them to be turned away from the Oberholzer home.
The high court's majority said that was an impermissible suppression of free speech. The decision noted the state constitution’s expansive characterization of free speech as an “invaluable right” to speak freely on any subject. While “we do not take lightly the concerns ... about the right to quiet enjoyment of one’s property,” Dougherty wrote, the Galapo family’s right to free speech was paramount.
