Foes of LAX Soliciting Ban Rally Forces

Forget the bumper-to-bumper traffic to the airport, the surly cops at curbside or the long ticket line that loops its way toward the counter like a crazy candy-cane swirl.

The real obstacle in catching your flight at Los Angeles International Airport can be maneuvering through the gantlet of nurses, priests, missionaries and political refugees waiting to request a few bucks for a good cause.

“On a summer day you can count seven layers of solicitors,” said William Mall, property manager for Terminal 2. “One time I had to separate two phony priests duking it out over territory.”

In response to complaints by airline executives, airport officials and tourists from around the world, the Los Angeles City Council is poised to put the kibosh on any kind of soliciting inside or outside the airport.

Just over a week ago, on a 9-2 vote, the council gave preliminary approval to an ordinance banning solicitation of money from passengers at LAX. The ban extends to the sidewalks outside the airport and to the parking lots, considered by officials to be part of the facility. Violators would face six months in jail or a $1,000 fine if convicted. But people will be allowed to distribute leaflets and printed material without collecting money.

Final approval on the ordinance is scheduled for Tuesday. But lawyers representing the solicitors said they will seek a temporary restraining order and an injunction blocking the council’s action.

“This whole thing was just railroaded through,” fumed Century City attorney David Liberman, representing the Los Angeles chapter of the Hare Krishnas. “Not soliciting would be a tremendous setback for the local temple. It would severely damage their missionary activities and their fund-raising.”

He said he didn’t know how much the Hare Krishna volunteers collect, but he added that they use the money for a free food program and for their local temple in Venice.

Liberman said he had been working with an assistant city attorney on an agreement restricting groups to certain areas of LAX, similar to a compromise at San Francisco International Airport, when he got a call March 20 saying the council was going to vote on a total ban the next day.

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Attorney Barry A. Fisher, who has represented LAX solicitors since 1974, said the California Constitution has broader rights for free speech than the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that efforts for an injunction should prevail.

For years, airport officials have tried to rid the facility of solicitation, saying it hindered the more than 58 million passengers getting to their gates.

In 1992 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Port Authority of New York’s ban on solicitation at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports, ruling that the hallways of an airport terminal are not akin to streets and sidewalks. Instead they are designed to serve busy travelers who should not be impeded and pressured to contribute. The Supreme Court ruling did not extend to the sidewalks outside an airport.

Armed with that 1992 decision, the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners considered a similar proposal that same year. After much protest from the same lawyers who currently plan to take the looming ordinance to court, the proposed ban was voted down.

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However, another campaign was launched last year to rid the airport’s seven terminals of the haphazard mishmash of mendicants who show up every day. The City Council referred the proposed ordinance to its Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district covers the airport.

She has heard from various airline officials such as Bernard DeSena.

“We probably get complaints daily,” said DeSena, managing director for American Airlines at Terminal 4. Passengers, he said, must work their way through layers of solicitors dressed in different attire. “It sort of amounts to a masquerade rather than a legitimate solicitation.”

Mall, the property manager, said Japanese business travelers have called him after arriving in Hawaii to say they had been hit up for $500 by solicitors who told them it was for a mandatory airport tax.

Every day, tourists such as Geoff and Patricia Anderson of England discover the challenge of reaching their departure gate as they trundle down the cavernous hallway past several layers of solicitors who each approach for a donation.

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First there are the Hare Krishnas, then the white-attired ladies from the Church of the Soldiers of the Cross of Christ, then the volunteers from the Committee for Human Rights in Iran, then the children from Right Way Youth Activities, and finally the man dressed as a priest from California Missionaries.

“It is a bit much,” confessed Geoff Anderson upon arriving several minutes later at Gate 27. “I find it quite intimidating.”

“To be honest, I don’t like it,” said his wife, Patricia.

But other passengers, such as Bob Majkut from Canada, aren’t bothered by the solicitors. “I usually donate as long as they are not aggressive or pushy,” he said.

The solicitors say they depend on these funds to operate. Naman Alex Poe, co-founder of Right Way Youth Activities, said the $100,000 his volunteers collect at LAX every year pays for the group’s activities to keep troubled South-Central Los Angeles youths off the streets.

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Other solicitors feel they are being unfairly maligned because of a few charlatans who take advantage of foreigners and hurried passengers.

“There are certain organizations who harass people, but the complaints are not about us,” said Zenaida Velez, dressed in a white nurse’s uniform. She is a member of the Church of the Soldiers of the Cross of Christ, a Pentecostal church for which she has been collecting funds at LAX since 1984. “This is one of the most important places for us to raise money.”

“I don’t think it is fair,” said Mary Lou Preciado, another Soldiers of the Cross member. “This is for a good cause.”

As she talked, a man plunked a dollar bill in the round white canister that Preciado cradled in her arm. “Thank you very much,” she said.