Lakeway officials on Monday adopted a resolution requesting that the Texas Legislature repeal a state law in direct conflict with a 2015 Supreme Court ruling.

The 2015 Supreme Court decision Reed v. Town of Gilbert holds that any distinction in treatment of different types of noncommercial signs based on message, including political signs, is unconstitutional for almost any purpose. Signs may be regulated, but regulations are limited to physical characteristics, location and duration of the sign, not the content.

The federal ruling is in direct opposition with Section 216.903 of the Texas Local Government Code, which requires Texas cities to regulate political signs differently than all other signs.

Because of that, the West Lake Hills City Council on Aug. 29 and Bee Cave City Council on Sept. 25 adopted resolutions asking the Texas Municipal League to include in its upcoming legislative agenda language that would clean up the state statute so it doesn’t conflict with federal law.

Citing the moves from those two cities, Lakeway City Attorney Cobby Caputo said Monday that it would be useful to have the city be on record as also favoring a repeal, or at least an amendment to the current state law.

The TML is a group that, among other initiatives, handles legislative advocacy on behalf of Texas cities. Executive Director Bennett Sandlin said Tuesday, Oct. 16, that the group did not end up including the item as part of its agenda, but added it doesn’t have to be the one to carry it for the cities to continue campaigning for the legislation.

“This just means the TML won’t be the ones sponsoring this bill,” Sandlin said. “They can get support from their local senators or other cities, for example, it just won’t appear in our agenda.”

Sandlin told Community Impact Newspaper in September that another option for cities is to challenge the state law in court, but added that was just speculative at this point.

Caputo said the likely next step is for Lakeway officials to distribute the resolution to the Texas legislative delegation.

“Then we can get back to looking at amending the sign ordinance and go through the process on that," Caputo said.

The Lakeway City Council has spent the past several months amending the city’s sign ordinance to comply with the Reed v. Gilbert ruling and brought the item before City Council at its Sept. 17 meeting.

Following the public comment period, the council discussed the amended ordinance in executive session but ultimately tabled approval of the agenda item so the city attorney could further review the various sections discussed.

“We’ve made some changes to [Lakeway’s sign ordinance] based on the conversation that was held [Sept. 17], so we’ll publish it again ahead of time like we did last time,” Caputo said.