In Metromedia, Inc. v. City of San Diego, 453 U.S. 490 (1981), a landmark United States Supreme Court decision on the regulation of outdoor advertising, a plurality of the Court found it permissible to distinguish between on-site and off-site commercial signs, explaining: Whether onsite advertising is permitted or not, the prohibition of offsite advertising is directly related to the stated objectives of traffic safety and esthetics. This is not altered by the fact that the ordinance is underinclusive because it permits onsite advertising .... The city may believe that offsite advertising, with its periodically changing content, presents a more acute problem than does onsite advertising .... San Diego has obviously chosen to value one kind of commercial speech--onsite advertising--more than another kind of commercial speech--offsite advertising. The ordinance reflects a decision by the city that the former interest, but not the latter, is stronger than the city's interests in traffic safety and esthetics .... As we see it, the city could reasonably conclude that a commercial enterprise--as well as the interested public--has a stronger interest in identifying its place of business and advertising the products or services available there than it has in using or leasing its available space for the purpose of advertising commercial enterprises located elsewhere. It does not follow from the fact that the city has concluded that some commercial interests outweigh its municipal interests in this context that it must give similar weight to all other commercial advertising. Thus, offsite commercial billboards may be prohibited while onsite commercial billboards are permitted. Metromedia, 453 U.S. at 511-12. The Court upheld the ordinance in prohibiting offsite commercial messages, but declared it unconstitutional in prohibiting onsite noncommercial messages. Writing for the plurality, Justice White noted that, with respect to commercial messages: the city has a sufficient basis for believing that billboards are traffic hazards and are unattractive, and obviously the most direct and perhaps the only effective approach to solving the problems they create is to prohibit them. The city has gone no further than necessary in seeking to meet its ends. Id. at 508. But Justice White concluded that these same concerns did not warrant prohibiting billboards that contained noncommercial speech: The fact that the city may value commercial messages relating to onsite goods and services more than it values commercial communications relating to offsite goods and services does not justify prohibiting an occupant from displaying its own ideas or those of others. . . . There is a broad exception for onsite commercial advertisements, but there is no similar exception for noncommercial speech. The use of onsite billboards to carry commercial messages related to the commercial use of the premises is freely permitted, but the use of otherwise identical billboards to carry noncommercial messages is generally prohibited. . . . Insofar as the city tolerates billboards at all, it cannot choose to limit their content to commercial messages; the city may not conclude that the communication of commercial information concerning goods and services connected with a particular site is of greater value than the communication of noncommercial messages.Id. at 513.