A small family-owned art company is suing a Texas city over a sweeping ordinance that gives government officials a veto over the content of murals that can be painted on building exteriors.
The federal civil rights lawsuit challenges the local ordinance that lawyers for the plaintiffs say enshrines into law the city’s own aesthetic preferences as part of an effort to kill off an art mural business.
Similar regulations are surfacing in other municipalities across the country to police public expression while trampling free expression and economic freedom in defiance of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the lawyers say.
He has been painting murals ever since. His work helped spark the artsy Deep Ellum community and Fort Worth’s Near Southside district. The incidental appearance of one of his murals in a 1990 Vanilla Ice music video won him a national audience and additional clients, PLF says.
Mr. Smith later formed Tilt Vision with his wife in Fort Worth. In December 2022, after securing a promising new commercial contract and leads on several others, the couple relocated their operations to Waller, Texas, a small city of 2,600 people between Dallas and Houston.
Finishes Solutions, a Waller-based real estate development and construction firm, hired Tilt Vision to create 13 murals for its buildings.
Less than three months and three completed murals later, a Waller resident complained to city council members that the colors employed for one mural—depicting clouds and the night sky—were too bright and demanded the city restrict murals. The city council agreed.
In February 2023, the council voted unanimously to approve a new, restrictive mural ordinance.
Ordinance 609 prohibits murals on commercial building fronts, murals used as advertisements, and those containing any type of “commercial messaging.”
Other residents are also forbidden from placing murals with personal, religious, or cultural messages on a commercial building if the building owner charges a fee.
In addition, each new mural must be registered with the city and the artist must pay a $500 fee before starting work. The city must approve the mural before work can begin.
The new law explicitly forbids the type of murals most often created by Tilt Vision—commercial murals that feature businesses’ or building owners’ names and the products they sell.
It also makes it a misdemeanor to violate the ordinance and imposes a fine of $2,000 a day as long as the violation persists.
After the new law took effect, Finishes Solutions suspended its Tilt Vision contract indefinitely. All other business leads dried up and the mural company has been unable to obtain any new contracts in the city.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Smith and Ms. Ray said their company was brought in by Tilt Vision to do 13 murals on buildings.
Before the project got underway, the couple met with Waller officials who were concerned that they might paint a Black Lives Matter mural in the city, Ms. Ray said.
Their concern stemmed from the case of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who was arrested during a traffic stop in Waller County in 2015.
Her case became a cause celebre for the movement after she was found dead in a jail cell, having apparently killed herself.
An autopsy found high levels of THC, a major psychoactive component of marijuana, present in her body.
Ms. Bland’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit that was settled out of court.
In 2017, Texas enacted a law named after Ms. Bland that mandated changes to corrections and police policies when encountering individuals with substance abuse or mental health problems.
The city officials “were a little cautious, so we assured them that we work with our clients and we’re not here to be divisive,” Ms. Ray said.
“We specialize in art-based economic development, we explained what that is—there’s murals, it brings commerce. Businesses look in an area that has art [and recognize] something’s happening here.”
“And that’s why Finishes brought us in and we showed examples of our work. And we thought everything was good.”
Because the intense Texas sun takes its toll on the murals, they have to be painted in bright colors so they will last at least five to 10 years before they need to be touched up, she said.
They painted one particular mural and not even a week later the client notified the couple that there were complaints about the bright colors used. City officials told Finishes that the city council was planning to enact a new ordinance soon to heavily restrict murals, she said.
At a city council meeting, the city attorney said the new ordinance would protect the people who did not like the murals from having to see them every day.
“We have to regulate it just like we would the speed limit,” Ms. Ray quoted the city attorney saying.
Mr. Smith said this was the first time in his 46 years of painting murals that he had encountered such opposition.
“Usually, cities are like, ‘man, this is great and you do something about … whatever our thing is [that] we’re promoting,’” he said.
Finishes started getting pushback from the city and “all of a sudden … permits weren’t being granted for their projects,” Ms. Ray said.
After the ordinance was passed, Tilt Vision’s contract worth $225,000 was permanently suspended “and they quit returning our calls. They just ghosted us, and we bought a house here,” she said.
Mr. Smith said, “We bring people together.”
“We’re not political people. We’re just regular folks. And murals are just something like when people drive down the road, they see it and they smile. And I love the feeling of giving people that are hard-working, [who] might have had a bad day, they drive past one of my murals, and they feel pretty good for at least the time they’re driving by.”
“And that’s all we do,” he said.
“I don’t know what other people’s fears they put on it or what they’re afraid of. I really can’t understand it at all.”
The Epoch Times has reached out for comment to Waller Mayor Danny Marburger.
