LAX Solicitors May Be Limited to Booth Areas

Solicitors who approach passengers at Los Angeles International Airport to ask for money would be restricted to booths in the facility’s nine terminals under an ordinance approved Tuesday by the city’s Airport Commission.

The law, which must receive the City Council’s blessing before it can go into effect, is patterned after a decades-old policy at Bay Area airports. It’s also the latest attempt in a 28-year struggle by the city to rein in fund-raisers at the world’s fifth-busiest airport.

That debate has long pitted city officials against civil libertarians, with the city pushing for restrictions on solicitors, even as their advocates have repeatedly succeeded in thwarting the city’s efforts by challenging them in court.

The ordinance would require charitable organizations to obtain a monthly permit from the airport designating booth locations and the days and times they can ask for donations. Permits would be issued on a first-come, first-served basis.

Solicitors would be allowed to approach passengers with printed material but could not ask for money unless they were sitting in the booth. LAX officials could revoke a group’s permit if it violated detailed rules of conduct set out in the ordinance. Currently, organizations must obtain an information card from the city each year if they plan to solicit on city property.

Airport officials argue that the proposed law is necessary because solicitors at LAX contribute to crowding by stopping passengers to ask for money and distracting travelers from important security information.

The commission postponed discussing the ordinance in May, and asked the city attorney’s office to hire a private litigator to review the document.

After this review, several minor changes were made, including one that gives the airport’s general manager the discretion to allow more than one group to use a booth at any given time.

The ordinance is the latest in a series of anti-soliciting regulations and laws enacted by the city since 1974.

Most of these met challenges, each of which the city lost, including one case before the California Supreme Court and another before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The city considers the new law a temporary means to restrict solicitation while it awaits a ruling in an appeal. Last summer, a federal judge declared unconstitutional a 1997 city ordinance banning fund-raising in airport terminals, on sidewalks and in parking lots.

“This is a stopgap measure. We hope to be successful on the ban,” said Ray Ilgunas, an assistant city attorney.

Ilgunas added that he is confident the new law would withstand legal challenges.

“The law permits us to restrict the manner in which 1st Amendment activities take place in the terminals,” he said.

Civil liberties lawyers disagreed, saying that the proposed law is too restrictive and would not stand up in court.

“They cannot put you somewhere or impede your ability to reach your intended audience,” said David Liberman, an attorney for the International Society of the Krishna Consciousness of California, which sued in federal court and obtained a restraining order that barred Los Angeles from enforcing the 1997 ordinance.

“This means they’re going to have to put booths all over the airport immediately adjacent to the pedestrian flow of traffic. I don’t think it’s logistically possible for them to meet that standard.”

The city agency that operates the airport has not yet decided where the booths would be located.