On March 25, the California Supreme Court issued a very narrow opinion in International Society for Krishna Consciousness of California v City of Los Angeles, S164272. This very old case, which is also pending in the 9th circuit, deals with whether the Society for Krishna Consciousness should be permitted to ask for donations at the Los Angeles Airport.

The California Supreme Court had been asked by the 9th circuit to decide whether the Los Angeles International Airport is a public forum under the California Constitution. But the California Supreme Court majority chose not to answer that question. Instead, it ruled that regardless of whether the airport is a public forum or not, the California Constitution does permit the airport to ban asking people for money at the airport. The majority said that prohibiting persons from soliciting the immediate receipt of funds at the airport is a narrowly tailored regulation of expressive activity, different from any broader ban on leafletting. In other words, soliciting funds causes bigger problems than other First Amendment activity, because soliciting funds requires willing persons to stop, fumble for and perhaps drop money; also soliciting funds can include the targeting of vulnerable and easily coerced persons, misrepresentation of the solicitor’s cause, and outright theft.

Cases involving public fora are of vital interest to groups that circulate petitions. Airports, of course, are almost completely useless for circulating petitions, because people at airports are generally not local residents and their signatures wouldn’t be valid. But a broad decision, saying that government-owned airports are not public fora, would have been a bad precedent for other government-owned places with a great deal of pedestrian traffic.

All seven justices agreed that the ban on soliciting funds is valid. One justice would have included in the opinion a conclusion that airports are public fora, and three justices wanted to include in the opinion a conclusion that airports are not public fora.

On March 24, the District of Columbia Board of Elections said it will no longer use vote-counting machines that have no paper trail. Instead, it will use iVotronic vote-counting machines, which do create a paper trail. The switch will be in time for this year’s primary. See this story.