The Church of the Latter-day Saints has decided to appeal the recent ruling of a federal circuit court panel that struck down restrictions of speech on the plaza in front of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. This case has been in the news for quite some time now, and it’s an interesting story.
In 1999, the Salt Lake City council sold the one block strip of Main Street on which the Temple and the church administrative offices are located to the church. It appears to have been quite a busy public thoroughfare. You can find a picture of the way it used to look, along with more details, here.
The church transformed the strip into a garden plaza, complete with fountains, trees, shrubs, walkways and a reflecting pool, and they did a nice job. Here’s what it looks like today. In making the sale, the City retained an easement guaranteeing continuous public access to and through the park, but the church required that a number of restrictions would be placed on that public use. No smoking, sunbathing, music, bicycling, skateboards, speechmaking, picketing, pamphleteering, cursing or begging, no offensive, indecent, obscene, vulgar, lewd or disorderly speech, dress or conduct and no proselytizing of any religion other than the Mormon faith. A few groups, including the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City, Utahns for Fairness, the Utah National Organization for Women and, of course, the ACLU, objected to some of the restrictions as violating the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The church won the first round at the Federal District Court level. But earlier this month, the ACLU won its appeal to the 10th Circuit. Now the church is appealing the ruling of the 3-judge panel to the full circuit court. The Constitutional issues are interesting, with both the ACLU and the church claiming the First Amendment is on their side. I think the ACLU has the high ground on this one. While I can understand the desire of the church to have a sort of temptation-free zone at its doorstep, the City’s easement makes the plaza public property. That means that any restrictions on speech in that space must fall within certain non-discriminatory Constitutional guidelines.
Earlier this year, before the ACLU won its appeal, several people were removed from the plaza for violating the restrictions, and two Southern Baptist protesters were arrested for handing out religious literature there. As distasteful as I personally find street corner proselytization, it’s clearly protected speech. The City at one point considered giving up the easement, which would have made the plaza the private property of the church. It appears that this solution has now been rejected. So unless the full 10th Circuit or the Supreme Court reverses the most recent ruling, they’ll have to be content with cutting back some of the restrictions while leaving those that don’t violate the Constitution in place. That should keep some lawyers busy for a while, I would think.
