Plaza has been issue since '99

The initial Main Street Plaza suit came after the city sold a block of Main Street to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1999 for $8.1 million. In that sale the city reserved a public-access easement across the plaza but gave the church the authority to prohibit on the plaza protests and proselytizing, certain dress and other things the LDS Church finds offensive.

With the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City, among others, as a client, the ACLU of Utah sued Salt Lake City over the restrictions, and in October the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver sided with the ACLU. The court said the city cannot have public access on the plaza while forbidding certain types of speech there.

The LDS Church, which voluntarily joined the suit, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

After the 10th Circuit's ruling, Anderson proposed "time, place and manner" restrictions on the plaza easement, a plan rejected by the church. Later Anderson and others developed a plan in which the easement rights would be traded for 2 acres of church-owned land in the city's Glendale area, where a privately funded community center would be built. The deal made the plaza entirely private and the city relinquished public guarantees of free expression and pedestrian passage on it.

Thursday the ACLU of Utah, with a half-dozen plaintiffs, filed 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.