Last week, the Ninth Circuit decided the final piece of a decades-old solicitation case, International Society for Krishna Consciousness of California, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 2014 WL 4086794. The religious society, referred to as "ISKCON" by the Court, had challenged, under both the First Amendment and the California Constitution, the Los Angeles airport's ban on the continuous or repetitive requests for the immediate receipt of funds in the airport terminals, parking lots, and on the sidewalks adjacent to both areas. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court's ruling that the ordinance in question was a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral restriction on expressive activity at LAX under the First Amendment. Key to the Court's finding was the fact that the parties agreed that the forum at issue was a nonpublic forum. ISKCON likely did not challenge the classification of the forum given the Supreme Court's decision in International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee (1992) 505 U.S. 672, in which the Court found that airport terminal buildings were a nonpublic forum.
August 27, 2014, by Jennifer E. Faught, Margaret Rosequist
