Push to Bar Solicitors at LAX Revived

Armed with a legal reprieve, Los Angeles city attorneys have renewed their effort to ban solicitors at LAX--a battle that has spanned at least 27 years, a number of regulations and ordinances, and more court appearances than anyone can count.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall heard a motion by the city attorney’s office asking her to find that a city ordinance restricting solicitors at Los Angeles International Airport is constitutional.

City attorneys were contesting a legal challenge brought three years ago--a day before the law was to have taken effect--by the International Society of Krishna Consciousness of California and the Committee for Human Rights in Iran. Both groups are fixtures at the airport, where they solicit money.

City officials argue that the airport is too congested to handle solicitors, who can impede travelers and, the city argues, pose safety problems by distracting people.

“The aggressiveness of solicitors has increased,” the city argued in papers filed Monday. “Further, it is hard to discern between reputable solicitors and disreputable solicitors.”

In 1998, U.S. District Judge John G. Davies rejected those claims, finding that the city’s latest law, which allows solicitors to approach passengers and pass out literature but not to ask for money, was illegal under the California Constitution.

But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Davies’ ruling last year after a decision by the California Supreme Court in a separate case called into question one of his findings. Attorneys for the Hare Krishnas asked the court Monday to reinstate Davies’ ruling.

In making his ruling, Davies had said that by banning only one form of free speech--in this case, soliciting donations--and permitting others, the city was discriminating on the basis of content. But in a case contesting another city ordinance that regulated aggressive panhandling last year, the state Supreme Court found that asking for funds in public is “content neutral.”

Attorneys for the Hare Krishnas argue that regardless of the new ruling, the religious group’s right to solicit funds at LAX in support of their cause is protected by free-speech clauses in both the California and the U.S. constitutions.

On Monday, Marshall said she couldn’t immediately rule on either motion, citing conflicting evidence about crowding at the airport.

Assistant City Atty. John Werlich submitted a study to the court Monday that concludes that the airport, which serves about 67 million passengers a year, needs an additional 1.4 million square feet of passenger terminal space.

But a study conducted by experts for the Hare Krishnas who measured traffic in airport terminals on several occasions concluded that LAX isn’t as congested as the city contends, and that solicitors don’t impede passengers.

Marshall’s question goes to the heart of the case: The level of airport crowding may determine if soliciting money there is incompatible with its purpose.

City officials have been trying to quash soliciting at the world’s third-busiest airport since at least 1974. But a series of anti-soliciting regulations and ordinances have met with legal challenges by civil liberties lawyers, each of which the city eventually lost, including one case before the California Supreme Court and another before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Several airports across the country have been more successful in limiting soliciting, including San Francisco International, where charitable organizations and religious groups are restricted to booths in two terminals. Ron Wilson, director of public affairs for the airport commission, said solicitors must have a permit to operate out of these booths, are required to stay within them at all times, and often have to share them with other organizations.

Back at LAX, Werlich said the city is willing to keep up the fight until it wins.

“We’re committed to go as far as necessary to get a resolution that is favorable,” he said. “We’ve put a lot of effort into it--the airport and the City Council believe this is a fair ordinance, and we’re trying to get a fair resolution.”