OPINION

JEFF ROSE, Chief Justice.

This case addresses the constitutionality of the Texas Highway Beautification Act.1 The United States Supreme Court recently struck down a similar sign regulation in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, where the high court observed:

In Reed, the Supreme Court refined its framework for analyzing "content based" regulations of speech, holding, "A law that is content based on its face is subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the government's benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of `animus toward the ideas contained' in the regulated speech."3 With this holding and broad framework for determining whether a government regulation of speech is "content based," Reed has arguably transformed First Amendment free-speech jurisprudence.

In Reed's wake, our principal issue here is not whether the Texas Highway Beautification Act's outdoor-advertising regulations violate the First Amendment, but to what extent. Based on our determination that, under Reed, certain provisions in Subchapters B and C of the Act are facially content-based restrictions on speech that render those subchapters unconstitutional, we will reverse the district court's judgment and render judgment severing those unconstitutional subchapters from the Texas Highway Beautification Act.

Background

The facts of this case are straightforward and undisputed. On July 7, 2011, Auspro Enterprises, LP, placed a sign supporting Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign on its property on State Highway 71 West in Bee Cave, Texas. On July 12, the Texas Department of Transportation sent a letter to Auspro explaining that its sign was "illegal" because all outdoor signs must be permitted and, although there is a specific exemption under Department rules for political signs, the exemption only allows political signs to be displayed 90 days before and 10 days after an election.4 The Department's letter ordered Auspro to remove the sign.

After Auspro failed to remove the sign, the Department brought an enforcement action in Travis County District Court for injunctive relief and civil penalties. In response, Auspro asserted that the Texas Highway Beautification Act and the Department's implementing rules violate, both facially and as applied, Auspro's right to free speech under the U.S. and Texas constitutions.5 The district court granted final judgment in the Department's favor after a bench trial on stipulated facts, specifically concluding, among other things, that the Act and the Department's rules were not unconstitutional as applied to Auspro.6

During Auspro's appeal from the district court's final judgment, the Supreme Court granted certiori and heard oral argument in Reed, prompting this Court to grant Auspro's motion to abate this appeal pending the resolution of Reed. Following the Reed decision and with the benefit of its instruction, we reinstated this appeal and allowed the parties to submit briefs regarding Reed's effect on our decision here.

Analysis

Auspro brings three issues on appeal, but its principal contention post-Reed is that the Texas Highway Beautification Act violates the First Amendment7 because it is a "content-based" government regulation of speech that cannot survive strict scrutiny. The Department, in turn, maintains that Reed does not inform our decision, arguing that the Texas Act actually favors election signs and that, relatedly, we remain bound by the Texas Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Texas Department of Transportation v. Barber, which upheld the constitutionality of the Act.8 In the alternative, the Department maintains that our constitutional inquiry here is limited to the election-sign exemption and that our sole remedy, should we determine that provision is unconstitutional, is severing that provision from the Act.

Free-speech jurisprudence, Reed, and its aftermath

The First Amendment mandates that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."9 The Supreme Court has interpreted this language to generally prohibit any laws that regulate or restrict expression based on content: "[A]bove all else, the First Amendment means that the government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content."10 Such "content-based" regulations of speech "are presumptively unconstitutional and may be justified only if the government proves that they are narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests."11 Because this strict-scrutiny inquiry is almost impossible to overcome—"It is rare that a regulation restricting speech because of its content will ever be permissible"12—the primary, and often dispositive, question in a free-speech analysis is whether the law in question is content based or content neutral. Regulations deemed content neutral—i.e., that regulate speech without regard to its content—are subject to the less exacting intermediate scrutiny, which requires that the law in question not be "substantially broader than necessary to achieve the government's interest."13 Reed is the Supreme Court's most recent articulation of its standard for determining whether a particular government regulation of speech is content based.

The government regulation of speech addressed in Reed was a sign ordinance that banned the display of outdoor signs in any part of the Town of Gilbert, Arizona without a permit.14 The ordinance included exemptions from the permit requirement for 23 different categories of signs and, within those exemptions, imposed varying restrictions depending on the category.15 For example, "ideological signs" were freely allowed with no restrictions, while "political signs" could be displayed without a permit, but only within the 60 days preceding an election and the 15 days following an election.16

The Reed plaintiffs—a small church and its pastor—challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance after the Town repeatedly cited the church for failure to comply with the sign ordinance's exemption for "temporary directional signs," generally defined as temporary signs intended to direct passerby to a "qualifying event" of a non-profit organization.17 The church signs, which were posted around town each Saturday to announce the time and location of the next day's service and then removed by Sunday afternoon, violated the ordinance's requirement that temporary directional signs be displayed for no more than twelve hours before the "qualifying event" and for no more than one hour afterward.18 The Supreme Court, explaining that a regulation of speech is content based if it "applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed," held that the sign code was content based on its face.19 Specifically, the Court noted that the ordinance defined "temporary directional signs" on the basis of the event being advertised and "political signs" on the basis of whether the sign's message "is designed to influence the outcome of an election."20 Ultimately, after deciding that the ordinance was a content-based regulation subject to strict scrutiny, the Supreme Court determined the Town could not meet its strict-scrutiny burden and struck down the sign ordinance.21

First Amendment jurisprudence has long analyzed "content-based" regulation of speech under strict scrutiny. Reed's significance in this area is its clarification of what constitutes a content-based restriction on speech. Before Reed, many courts—including the Ninth Circuit in the decision Reed reversed and the Texas Supreme Court in its 2003 Barber decision upholding the Texas Act—relied on various arguments to deem as content neutral, and thus subject to only intermediate scrutiny, statutes that, on their face, differentiated between categories of speech based on topic or ideas expressed—i.e., were facially content based.22 Stated generally, these arguments were based on considerations such as whether the regulations in question had been adopted or motivated by "disagreement with the message conveyed" and whether there were justifications for the regulation that were "unrelated to the content of the sign."23 Reed emphatically rejected these arguments, asserting that this type of analysis "skips the crucial first step in the content-neutrality analysis: determining whether the law is content neutral on its face."24 If the law is content-based on its face, Reed explained, that is the end of the inquiry: "A law that is content based on its face is subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the government's benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of `animus toward the ideas contained' in the regulated speech."25

In sum, as the Supreme Court explained in Reed, a law can be content based in either of two ways: (1) by distinguishing speech by the topic discussed; and (2) where the government's purpose or justification for enacting the law depends on the underlying "idea or message expressed"—i.e., the law is facially content neutral, but the motives in enacting it were content based.26 "Both are distinctions drawn based on the message a speaker conveys, and, therefore, are subject to strict scrutiny."27 As noted, this framework marks a significant departure from the content-neutrality analysis used by other courts, including the Texas Supreme Court, that would uphold facially content-based restrictions as long as those restrictions could be justified on content-neutral grounds and as long as the regulations were not adopted based on disagreement with the message.

Having determined that the Town's sign ordinance was content based, the Reed opinion turned next to analyzing whether the Town could meet its strict-scrutiny burden of showing that the ordinance furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.28 The Town offered only two governmental interests in support of the distinctions the sign code draws: preserving the Town's aesthetic appeal and traffic safety. The Supreme Court, willing to assume for argument's sake that these asserted interests were compelling governmental interests, nevertheless concluded that both "distinctions fail as hopelessly underinclusive"29—i.e., they were too limited in their regulatory reach to address the interest at issue.30 As for the aesthetic interest specifically, the Court noted that the Town could not "claim that placing strict limits on temporary directional signs is necessary to beautify the Town while at the same time it allowed unlimited numbers of other types of signs that create the same [aesthetic] problem."31 The Supreme Court found the safety interest likewise underinclusive, noting that it "offered no reason to believe that directional signs pose a greater threat to safety than do ideological signs or political signs."32 In light of its underinclusiveness, the Court held that the Town's sign ordinance failed strict scrutiny.33

Reed next addressed concerns that its holding would "prevent governments from enacting effective sign laws," noting that "not `all distinctions' are subject to strict scrutiny, only content-based ones are. Laws that are content neutral are instead subject to lesser scrutiny."34 As examples, the Court pointed to restrictions in the Town's sign code regarding size, building materials, lighting, moving parts, and portability.35 The Court further pointed to lower courts that have "long held that similar content-based sign laws receive strict scrutiny" while "there is no evidence that the towns in their jurisdictions have suffered catastrophic effects."36

Three of the justices filed separate opinions in Reed addressing implications of the majority opinion.37 Justice Alito proposed several regulations that he thought would not be considered content based, such as distinctions between on-premises and off-premises signs and time restrictions on signs for one-time events.38 He also noted that, in addition to regulating signs put up by private actors, "government entities may erect their own signs consistent with the principles that allow governmental speech."39 Justice Kagan, taking a different view in an opinion concurring in the judgment only, emphasized that, "of course," restrictions on one-time event signs would be facially content-based in light of the majority's decision because they would "single out specific subject matter for differential treatment."40 Any sign ordinance that restricts some categories of speech while exempting others, Justice Kagan cautioned, is now in "jeopardy" following the Court's decision and would likely be struck down.41 Indeed, a variety of sign codes previously considered constitutional have been held to be unconstitutional content-based restrictions on speech based on Reed, including Justice Alito's example of a permissible ordinance distinguishing between on-premise and off-premise signs,42 as well as an ordinance setting time limits on election signs.43 Relatedly, Reed has thus far been cited in cases striking down an anti-panhandling ordinance,44 an anti-robocall statute,45 and a law banning "ballot selfies."46

Reed and the Texas Highway Beautification Act

Born from a mid-1960s initiative to clean up the nation's roads, the federal Highway Beautification Act of 1965 requires states to regulate "outdoor advertising" "in areas adjacent to the Interstate System" or risk losing ten percent of their federal highway funding.47 To comply, states must exert "effective control" over outdoor advertising located inside an imaginary corridor around the highway system that extends 660 feet beyond each side of the "the main traveled way."48 "Effective control" means that the state must limit the signs and displays within the corridor to "directional and official signs and notices"; "signs . . . advertising the sale or lease of property upon which they are located"; "signs . . . advertising activities conducted on the property on which they are located"; "signs lawfully in existence on October 22, 1965"; and "signs . . . advertising the distribution by nonprofit organizations of free coffee."49 The federal act generally exempts areas that the states have zoned as industrial and commercial.50

The Texas Legislature passed the Texas Highway Beautification Act in 1972 to comply with the federal act's mandate that it do so or risk losing highway funds,51 but included in it other highway-beautification provisions unrelated to the federal mandate, including laws authorizing state-controlled right-of-way information signs, landscaping and scenic enhancement, and junkyard control.52 The Act's provisions regulating outdoor advertising essentially mirror the federal act, banning all signs located (1) within 660 feet of a right-of-way if the advertising is visible from the interstate, and (2) beyond 660 feet of a right-of-way if the advertising is visible from the highway and erected for the purpose of having its message seen from the highway.53 The Act then sets forth a number of exemptions to the ban, including exemptions for signs located in commercial and industrial areas;54 signs advertising as for sale or for lease the property on which the sign is located; signs advertising natural wonders or historic attractions; signs advertising activities that will take place on the property where the sign is located; signs that have as their purpose the protection of life and property;55 and, specifically implicated here, signs on private property that "relat[e] solely to a public election."56

Section 391.032 of the Act gives the Transportation Commission the authority to regulate outdoor advertising in the commercial and industrial areas that are exempted from the Act's ban,57 which the Commission has done in Title 43 of the Texas Administrative Code.58 Those rules, stated generally, require that all signs located within the same imaginary corridor as that in the Act have a Department-issued permit or be subject to a fine and removal, unless the sign qualifies under one of several exemptions.59 The rules' exemptions include those set forth in the Act—e.g., election signs and signs with the purpose of protecting life or property—as well as those for public-service signs, signs of nonprofits or other charitable organizations, neighborhood subdivision or homeowners-association signs, and signs showing the names of ranches.60 Here, because Auspro's property was located in a commercial-zoned area, its sign was required to have a permit or qualify for a permit exception, which it did not.

Under Reed's standard for content neutrality—which simply asks whether the law applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed—the Texas Act's outdoor-advertising regulations are clearly content based. The Texas Supreme Court acknowledged as much when it considered these same provisions of the Act in Barber: "The Act . . . does make certain distinctions based on subject matter."61 Specifically, as described above, most of the Act's exemptions depend entirely on the subject matter of the sign's message:

And at least one exemption in the Act is based on the function or purpose of the regulated speech: "[O]utdoor advertising that has as its purpose the protection of life and property."66 Because exemptions to the Department's permitting rules—several of which are identical to Act exemptions—are likewise based on the speech's subject matter, function or purpose, and the speaker, they too are content-based regulations of speech under Reed's framework.

Like the Town of Gilbert's sign ordinance, the Texas Act and the related Department rules restrict speech in different ways based on the communicative content of the sign.67 For example, a sign advertising a presidential candidate's fundraising event at the site where the sign is displayed would be allowed at any time under the Texas Act,68 while a sign that merely expresses the view that one should vote for that same presidential candidate would be banned during all but the small window around an election.69 Likewise, and more to the point here, Auspro's election sign for Ron Paul is treated differently under the Department rules (promulgated under the Act) than are signs conveying other messages and ideas, including, for example, a sign by a nonprofit organization advertising an event by that organization.70 Under Reed's framework, the Texas Act's outdoor-advertising regulations and associated Department rules are, on their face, content-based regulations of speech.71

The Department asserts that Reed does not inform our decision here because the Texas Act actually protects Auspro's speech. The election-sign exemption does not prohibit elections signs in violation of the First Amendment, the Department argues, but "allows certain election speech that would otherwise be barred by the Act's general, content-neutral prohibition of signs visible from highways." "Even if the exemption draws a content-based line," the Department continues, "that line would, if anything favor the very type of election speech that Auspro advocates." This argument misses the point of Reed.

First, there is little, if any, difference between the election-sign exemption examined in Reed and the one at issue here.72 Both exempt election-related signs from a general ban on signs within a certain number of days surrounding an election.73 More importantly, both exemptions distinguish speech based on the subject matter of that speech. Signs relating to elections are restricted as to date and size in ways that other non-election signs are not. Characterizing such an exemption as "favorable" to protected speech does not change the fact that it is a distinction based on content under Reed. If anything, it exposes the exemption as "a paradigmatic example of content-based discrimination."74 The Department's insistence on looking beyond the face of the Act despite its awareness that the election-sign "exemption draws a content-based line" ignores Reed's plainly stated holding that "[a] law that is content based on its face is subject to strict scrutiny regardless of the government's benign motive, content-neutral justification, or lack of `animus toward the ideas contained' in the regulated speech."75 The Texas Act, as both the Department and the Texas Supreme Court have acknowledged, on its face draws distinctions based on the message a speaker conveys—i.e., is content based on its face under the Reed analysis.

In what it considers a related argument regarding Reed's import here, or rather lack of import, the Department next suggests that the sign code in Reed and the Texas Act are inherently different because, as the Texas Supreme Court noted in Barber, the Texas Act "allows all onsite commercial speech and all onsite noncommercial speech" throughout the year.76 This is important, the Department urges, because if Auspro had simply made "its election speech pertain[] to activities on its premises, its sign would have complied with the Texas Act." While this may be true, the Department's argument again overlooks the effect of Reed's holding. The point of Reed is not whether the regulation provides alternative avenues of speech, but whether it "applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed."77 Moreover, the Department's suggestion that Auspro could have complied with the Act by simply changing its sign to advertise a Ron Paul-related event on its premises—an example similar to that used in Reed78—actually emphasizes the Act's disparate treatment of content.

Finally, before addressing the Department's remaining point, we note that we always faithfully adhere to our obligation, as an intermediate appellate court, to defer to the Texas Supreme Court's decisions, and we are mindful that its decision to uphold the Act in Barber would likely be dispositive of Auspro's appeal here.79 In light of Reed's changes to First Amendment jurisprudence, however, we respectfully disagree with the Department's assertion that we remain bound by Barber's holding that the Texas's Highway Beautification Act "is content neutral and constitutes a valid time, place, and manner restriction."80 As we explain above, Barber acknowledged that the Texas Highway Beautification Act:

In light of Reed's unequivocal holding, these distinctions render the Act's sign ban content based and presumptively invalid unless the government can meet its strict-scrutiny burden.82 We would note further that the Barber majority, along with many other courts, construed pre-Reed precedent as allowing "content-based regulations [to be treated] as content neutral if the regulations are motivated by a permissible content-neutral purpose,"83 as long as "the Act does not endorse any particular viewpoint."84 In doing so, Barber reasoned that "the Act does not endorse any particular viewpoint"; "the Texas Legislature did not adopt the Texas Highway Beautification Act because it disagreed with any messages that might otherwise be conveyed"; and ultimately concluded that "the Act is . . . content neutral because it is `justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech.'"85 With regard to the election-sign exemption, the Barber majority explained that, although "arguably content based," it could be "deemed neutral" because it "serves purposes unrelated to the content of expression."86 As noted, Reed has explicitly rejected these same arguments and analyses.87 In doing so, Reed has, at a minimum, eliminated the essential underpinnings of the content-neutrality analysis on which Barber's holding relied. As such, we must adhere to our obligation to follow the United States Supreme Court on this First Amendment issue.88

We hold that, under Reed's framework, the Texas Highway Beautification Act's outdoor-advertising regulations and related Department rules are content-based regulations of speech subject to strict scrutiny.

Strict scrutiny

Under a strict-scrutiny analysis, which has been described as "`strict' in theory but usually `fatal' in fact,'"89 the government has the burden of proving that the restriction furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.90 Here, the Department has to demonstrate that the Act's differentiation between types of signs furthers a compelling governmental interest and it is narrowly tailored to that end.91 The Department acknowledges that it cannot do this, and we cannot disagree. For example, even assuming, as did the Supreme Court in Reed,92 that aesthetic appeal and traffic safety are compelling governmental interests, the Act's provisions are underinclusive: election signs outside the 100-day window around an election would pose no greater threat to safety and would not categorically be any uglier than the signs that are treated differently under the Act.93 And with the possible exception of the exemption for signs regarding the protection of life and property,94 the Act's remaining content-based exemptions are similarly underinclusive.95 For the same reasons, the related Department rules likewise cannot meet such an exacting standard. Accordingly, the Act's sign regulations and related Department permitting rules fail strict scrutiny.96

Remedy

Having determined that the government restrictions on speech at issue here fail strict scrutiny, we must now determine the appropriate remedy. The Department maintains that rather than grant Auspro its requested relief of declaring the entire Texas Highway Beautification Act unconstitutional, we are limited to severing the election-sign exemption from the Act. This is so, the Department contends, because Auspro's opening brief to this Court targeted only the election-sign exemption, which the Department asserts means that Auspro has waived any broader challenge to the Act and, thus, the remedy to declare the entire Act unconstitutional.97 The Department relatedly invokes Texas's broad severability statute, urging that because we can remedy the Act's unconstitutionality by simply severing the election-sign exemption, we must do so.98 We disagree that Auspro's opening brief is so limited,99 but we do agree that Texas's severability doctrine dictates that we preserve portions of the Texas Act.

The applicable severability provision of the Code Construction Act provides:

This severability provision is similar to the doctrine previously adopted by the Texas Supreme Court:

In short, the purpose of severability is to sever a statute's problematic portions while leaving the remainder intact whenever possible—i.e., to "limit the solution to the problem"102—but whatever we do, our primary focus must be on the intent of the legislature.103

Dependent as it is on Reed and Auspro's underlying claim, our decision here is necessarily limited to government regulation of speech, specifically Texas's regulation of outdoor advertising in the Texas Highway Beautification Act. But as briefly noted above, the Texas Act includes several provisions that, while related to highway beautification, do not constitute government regulation of speech. For example, the Act includes the Legislature's program for state controlled right-of-way information logo signs;104 regulations controlling junkyards and automobile graveyards along the State's highways;105 and the Transportation Commission's legislative authority to acquire property along the State's highways "to restore, preserve, or enhance scenic beauty" or to provide public rest areas.106 Because these provisions in the Texas Act are not government regulations of speech, neither Reed nor our decision here affect their validity.107 Also, the provisions in Subchapter I are not affected by our decision here because they authorize the State to regulate commercial speech along certain specified highways, specifically off-premise signs displaying messages regarding "goods, services, or merchandise."108 Regarding our severability analysis, it is worth noting that these provisions of the Act, although related to highway beautification, were not mandated by the federal Highway Beautification Act.109 Further, because these provisions are complete in themselves—i.e., they would not be affected by the invalidity of the sign-ban regulations of Subchapters B and C—and are capable of being executed as the Legislature intended in the absence of the Act's outdoor-advertising regulations, Texas's severability doctrine mandates that they be preserved.110

Turning to the regulations of speech that are at issue here, those can be found in Subchapters B and C of the Act.111 Within those subchapters, there are several individual sections that, under Reed and our analysis here, are unconstitutional content-based restrictions on speech. As such, severing only the election-sign exemption, as the Department asks us to limit our remedy, would not cure the constitutional infirmities caused by the remaining content-based exemptions. In fact, severing only the election-sign exemption would not even remedy Auspro's harm because the Act would still ban Auspro's election campaign sign—all year, every year—while allowing other categories of signs at all times, all based on their content. In other words, even with the election-sign exemption invalidated, the Act would still treat speech differently based on the content of that speech.

To resolve the Act's constitutional problems, all of the content-based provisions must be severed—including at least sections 391.031(b), 391.037,112 391.061(c), and 391.070.113 This would leave standing, with respect to the substantive provisions of the Act's ban on outdoor advertising, only section 391.031(a)'s prohibition against signs within the imaginary federal corridor and two exemptions: one for signs erected in industrial or commercial areas (subject to state permitting rules); and the other for signs erected before October 22, 1965.114

Would this leave standing a law—i.e., the Legislature's ban on outdoor advertising—that is "complete in itself"?115 Perhaps. But what is not so easily answered in the affirmative is the second prong of the severability question: Is the remaining law "capable of being executed in accordance with the apparent legislative intent, wholly independent of that which was rejected"?116

The Department suggests that because the original version of the Texas Act did not include the election-sign exemption, severing that exemption would do no harm to the Legislature's intent in enacting the ban on outdoor advertising. But the 1972 Texas Act included the sign-ban exemptions now codified in section 391.031.117 And certain of these original exemptions seem to be directed at protecting traditional rights enjoyed by property owners—e.g., allowing an owner to advertise the sale or lease of the property; to promote or advertise activities taking place on the property; and to warn about issues affecting life and property. To that extent, these exceptions express the Legislature's intent to protect those rights, and a blanket ban on all outdoor advertising would potentially alter that intent. These arguments also completely ignore the possibility that a complete ban on all signs, while likely content neutral, could raise other free-speech and property-rights concerns.118 At a minimum, though, we cannot know whether the Legislature would have enacted a complete ban on outdoor advertising. Moreover, given that the federal Highway Beautification Act—the primary impetus for the Texas Act and, in fact, the law on which the Texas Act "is conditioned"119—seems to share the same constitutional flaws as does the Texas Act under Reed,120 we cannot say with any certainty what the Texas Legislature will want in terms of a ban on highway signs in the absence of a federal act requiring one. Should the federal act be declared unconstitutional—a possibility suggested by the United States' amicus brief in Reed121—Congress and other state legislatures would be faced with deciding whether to enact sign restrictions and, if so, how to comply with Reed. That is the sole province of the Legislative Branch.

Finally, we think it is worth noting that this Court—in the holding later reversed by the supreme court in Barber—addressed and rejected this same suggestion by the Department that we could remedy any constitutional flaws in the Act by eliminating all exemptions, leaving a total ban on outdoor advertising.122 Our response was to invoke the Supreme Court's reasoning in City of Ladue v. Gilleo:

And as we did then, we conclude today, "The same might be said of the Texas Highway Beautification Act."124

Conclusion

Guided by Reed, we are compelled to reverse the district court's judgment and render judgment severing Subchapters B and C125 from the Texas Highway Beautification Act as unconstitutional content-based restrictions on speech.