ST. LOUIS – A 2-year-old state law banning sexually suggestive billboards along Missouri highways is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court panel ruled Monday.

The ruling by the three-judge panel for the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis overturned a U.S. District Court’s ruling earlier this year that banning such billboards within a mile of state highways was a constitutional regulation of commercial speech.

The law, which took effect August 2004, sought to reduce the possible negative effects that sexually suggestive billboards supposedly posed, including harming minors, reducing traffic safety, and dropping property values.

But the appellate judges ruled that the Missouri statute had no such effect.

The ruling said the law was not “narrowly drawn” to meet those goals, and the state “failed to make a showing that a more limited speech regulation would not have adequately served the state’s interest.”

Passions Video Inc., an adult book store; Gala Entertainment Inc., a Kansas City strip club; and the Lion’s Den adult stores filed the suit last year against Attorney General Jay Nixon. John Haltom, an adult business owner with 10 stores that sell lingerie, sex toys and adult videos in six states also sued the state.

The law would have forced the adult business owners and others with sexually suggestive billboards near highways to take them down by mid-2007. Billboard advertising companies have refused to allow new ones to go up since the 2004 law.

Sen. Matt Bartle [pictured], R-Lee’s Summit, spearheaded the legislation, modeling it after a similar law upheld by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

It was not immediately known if the state would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The law eventually would have let an adult-oriented business within a mile of a highway to have just two signs – one showing the business’ name and operating hours, the other noting it is off-limits to minors.