City to Continue Fight Over LAX Solicitations

Los Angeles city officials agreed Tuesday to go back to court in an attempt to reinstate an ordinance banning soliciting at Los Angeles International Airport, continuing a 27-year battle over the activities of charities and other groups at the facility.

The city Airport Commission directed its attorneys to appeal a federal judge’s ruling this month overturning a city law that allowed solicitors to approach passengers and distribute literature, but not to ask for money.

The agency that runs LAX also decided, as a backup, to draft another ordinance that would regulate airport solicitations, rather than prohibit them. That law would limit the times and locations that organizations could contact the public and ask for contributions. It probably would restrict the groups to designated booths, similar to restrictions at the San Francisco and San Diego airports.

Airport officials said the limitations on soliciting could remain in place, as the city continues its court fight to ban it altogether. “The board is not abandoning what it has already passed--this is a temporary solution pending final resolution of the case we have going now,” said John Werlich, an assistant city attorney.

City officials argue that the airport is too congested to allow solicitors to wander through terminals, impeding travelers and posing a potential safety problem. The city has continued its attempt to limit outside groups for more than two decades because of repeated complaints by travelers and airlines, according to airport administrators.

Attorneys for the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, who have won several civil liberties challenges to anti-solicitation laws enacted by the city, said they will sue airport operators yet again if they restrict their clients to specific areas at LAX.

“If the ordinance is similar to San Francisco’s, we’ll instigate another lawsuit,” said David M. Liberman, an attorney who represented the Hare Krishnas in the recent court victory. “We don’t believe that those restrictions, confining these activities to a booth, would survive under California law.”

He added that Hare Krishna members have provided suggestions to the airport agency that would preserve free speech rights, while addressing airport administrators’ concerns. The guidelines might, for example, limit outside groups to certain areas of the airport and ask them to abide by a code of conduct, Liberman said.

Airport officials said they would consider any such suggestions.

San Francisco successfully limited solicitations at its airport with a law that restricts religious and charitable groups to “free speech” booths in two terminals. Solicitors must have a permit to operate out of those booths.

The groups are allowed to use the booths for three- to four-hour periods and cannot venture elsewhere to contact the public, said Mike McCarron, assistant deputy airport director at San Francisco International Airport.

San Francisco’s policy has withstood several lawsuits that challenged its constitutionality, McCarron said. The courts found that, given security concerns, the rules are “a reasonable restriction and that we weren’t infringing on them in any way,” McCarron said.

The agency that operates LAX has already identified locations in each of the airport’s eight terminals where booths could be installed. But it is still working out details, such as hours of operation and how to assign booths among various groups, Werlich said.

The agency hopes to provide an ordinance to the Airport Commission for its review in the next month. City Council approval would be necessary before police could begin to enforce the ordinance.

The appeal will be directed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.