Judge to rule on plaza suit

It was once referred to as a community gathering place akin to "a little bit of Paris."

But now Salt Lake City and LDS Church attorneys say people need an "invitation" to walk across Main Street Plaza.

"The people who are on that plaza now are there by invitation," Steven Allred, chief deputy city attorney, said.

"People can only enter the plaza with the church's permission," LDS Church attorney Alan Sullivan added.

Tenth U.S. Circuit Court Judge Dale Kimball on Monday heard arguments in the American Civil Liberties Union's second Main Street Plaza case.

Kimball said he would weigh the arguments and offer a written decision as soon as possible.

ACLU attorney Mark Lopez considered the arguments by Sullivan and Allred a sham, noting that the church's own estimates show 30 million people use the plaza yearly to eat lunch, cut across an otherwise closed block or to access Temple Square. Few, if any, get church permission before entering Main Street Plaza. In fact, Lopez said, the plaza functions just like it did before the city traded its public access easement on the plaza to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for church-owned land and cash totaling nearly $5.5 million.

Lopez said the city had a wink-and-nod commitment from the LDS Church that church leaders would keep public access on the plaza open if the city traded away the public access easement.

Because of that commitment and because the plaza still functions as a thoroughfare as it did when it was part of Main Street, it remains a public forum, Lopez said. The resulting situation, he said, is that the LDS Church is controlling free speech on what amounts to a public park.

Like with any park, Lopez told the court, the LDS Church can't regulate speech on the plaza or forbid a homosexual couple from holding hands while walking there.

"They've purchased the right to run Main Street," Lopez said. "It's as pure and simple as that."

The city and church need to do something more, like put up a fence, to prohibit the plaza from acting as a public forum, Lopez said.

Allred and Sullivan agreed the church controls speech on the plaza, but that's because it owns and operates it free and clear, just like any private property owner, they said.

"It is clearly the city's intent to wash its hands of this property," Allred said.

Sullivan said any behind-the-scenes agreement is irrelevant because legal documents signed by city leaders indicate any such prior agreement is null and void.