• April 1999 — The Salt Lake City Council agrees to sell a block of Main Street to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for $8.1 million. In the sale, the city reserves a public-access easement across the plaza but gives the church the authority to prohibit on-the-plaza protests and proselytizing, certain dress and behaviors the LDS Church found offensive.

• November 1999 — Representing several plaintiffs, the ACLU of Utah sues Salt Lake City over the restrictions.

• October 2002 — The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver sides with the ACLU, ruling the city cannot have public access on the plaza while forbidding certain types of speech there.

• December 2002— Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson proposes "time, place and manner" restrictions on the plaza easement, a plan that is rejected by the LDS Church.

• July 2003 — Anderson and others develop a plan in which the easement rights would be traded for 2.1 acres of church-owned land in the city's Glendale area, where a privately funded community center would be built. The deal makes the plaza entirely private and the city relinquishes public guarantees of free expression and pedestrian passage on it.

• August 2003 — The ACLU of Utah, representing five plaintiffs, files suit challenging the community center deal on the basis that it takes away constitutional guarantees of free expression and was too favorable a deal for the LDS Church.

• January 2004 — U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball hears oral arguments in the ACLU's lawsuit.

• May 2004 — Judge Kimball dismisses the ACLU's suit.