ACLU reiterates its claims in plaza filing

The American Civil Liberties Union, in its latest filing over the Main Street Plaza court battle, repeated its claims the city appeased the LDS Church, at the cost of losing the constitutional right of free speech, in settling the plaza dispute.

The ACLU's latest filing is a response to Salt Lake City's motion to dismiss the case.

The city argues the ACLU has no case and there were numerous secular things — including a $5 million community center — the city gained from adopting Mayor Rocky Anderson's plan to trade the city's plaza easement to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Therefore, city lawyers argue, the city couldn't have violated constitutional prohibitions regarding excessive involvement of religion in government as the ACLU contends.

In its response filed Monday, the ACLU again argues the city traded the easement to the LDS Church in order to appease the church's wishes. The community center was only a ruse to hide the real reason behind the easement trade, it argues.

U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball plans to rule on the motion to dismiss, as well as the ACLU's desire to temporarily return free speech to the plaza, on Jan. 26.

Meanwhile, H. David Burton, presiding bishop of the LDS Church, will be deposed in the case today. Anderson is slated to give his deposition Friday and billionaire Jon M. Huntsman Sr., who acted as a liaison between the church and Anderson during plaza negotiations, will be deposed next week.

The initial Main Street Plaza suit came after the city sold a block of Main Street to the LDS Church 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-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 2002 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.

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 two 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.

The ACLU of Utah, with a half-dozen plaintiffs, then 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.

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