The ACLU filed suit against Salt Lake City after Anderson and the City Council agreed to trade the city's public access easement across the plaza to the LDS Church for church-owned land in Glendale, where a $4.5 million community center, dubbed the Sorenson Unity Center, is to be built.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals had previously ruled the easement created a public forum open to preachers and protesters who had an ax to grind against the church. The church complained, saying detractors now had a bully pulpit just steps from its historic downtown temple.

The ACLU said political pressure from the church and its members led the mayor to give up the city's public access easement though the plaza. After all, the ACLU said, Anderson previously had pledged not to give away public access on the plaza. Anderson's change of heart violated constitutional provisions against government favoring one religion over another, the ACLU said.

The sale of the city's pedestrian easement "resulted from undue influence by the LDS Church," according to the suit. Furthermore, the mayor knew his Unity Center deal "would reinforce the non-LDS community's distrust of any cynicism about the influence of the LDS Church on the affairs of government."

The city's secular gains of the Unity Center deal were "nothing more than a facade" to hide the true purpose of protecting the LDS Church from critics, according to the suit.

Monday, the court ruled that by giving up the easement — for roughly $5.3 million in compensation, including the community center — the city was getting more than 10 times its market value and rightfully disengaging itself from a potential constitutional entanglement with the church over control of the plaza.

Anderson's change of heart amounted to "policy choices in a democracy," the court said.

"The fact that the mayor changed his mind by first vocally opposing the sale of the easement and later supporting it, or that this issue was controversial, simply does not support the claim that the transaction was a sham," the judges said.

The ACLU also argued the plaza is an historic public forum subject to First Amendment guarantees of free speech. Under the trade, the average speaker would have difficulty knowing when he ventured off public property and onto private, limited-speech land, the ACLU said.

Attorneys similarly pointed to Salt Lake City's "right of re-entry," which requires that the church maintain the plaza as a "landscaped space." The city's right of re-entry creates a similar situation to the city's pedestrian passage easement, which previously cut through the plaza.