L.A. Loses Court Battle Over Soliciting at LAX

The city of Los Angeles lost another round Friday in its 24-year legal battle to prevent charitable and religious groups from soliciting donations at Los Angeles International Airport.

U.S. District Judge John G. Davies ruled that the city ordinance banning such solicitations is illegal under the California Constitution.

Since 1974, the city has adopted a number of regulations and ordinances to banish the solicitors from the airport’s terminals, sidewalks and parking lots.

Each time, civil liberties lawyers have challenged the city’s crackdown, and each time the city has eventually lost, including one case before the California Supreme Court and another before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The legal challenge that led to Friday’s ruling was brought by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which obtained a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement a day before the law was to have gone into effect last year.

In their defense of the ordinance, city officials charged that solicitors at the airport are a nuisance and a security problem. They harass passengers, impede traffic flow in the terminals, distract people’s attention from their carry-on baggage and sometimes hustle money for bogus charities, creating headaches for an understaffed airport security force, the city’s lawyers contended.

While acknowledging that there was some merit to the city’s concerns, Davies wrote in a 28-page opinion that the ordinance went too far.

Under California law, the judge said, the government may impose “time, place and manner restrictions” on free speech in public places, but only “without regard to content.” By banning only one form of free speech--the solicitation of donations--and permitting other forms, he ruled, the city ordinance discriminates on the basis of content.

Davies suggested that there are less restrictive ways to resolve the airport’s security concerns.

For example, he said, the Airport Department could bar the solicitors from areas that tend to become overcrowded or restrict the hours during which they solicit.

“The court cannot uphold an ordinance which prohibits protected free speech because the airport police lack the personnel to enforce the criminal laws,” he wrote.

Officials at the city attorney’s office could not be reached for comment Friday evening, but Barry A. Fisher, who represented the Society for Krishna Consciousness, said he hoped that the City Council would call off its “quarter-century-old war against free speech.”