Is it the end of an era? After a 13-year battle with the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for the right to distribute Hindu religious literature, Hare Krishna (ISKCON) devotees may finally have to throw in the towel. A California Supreme Court ruling earlier this week effectively banned the Vaishnava Hindu group from their airport gig… and raised a lot of questions about the reaches and limits of First Amendment free speech protection.

Full disclosure: I am a Vaishnava Hindu member of ISKCON myself– a full-fledged Hare Krishna. I also do volunteer work for that organization’s Office of Communications. And I happen to be an attorney, who studied a fair share of Constitutional Law — specifically as applied to religious organizations — in Law School.     

In other words, I’m still working on this one.

In the mean time, here’s how my friend and long-time Beliefnet contributor Lavina Melwani describes it on her blog, “Lassi with Lavina”:

It was a bit like a floating library of Vedantic literature – and
now it’s shutting down, or is being grounded, if you want to take the
airport analogy a bit further.  For the last four decades, the Hare
Krishnas, as the followers of International Society for Krishna
Consciousness (ISKCON) are popularly known, were a fixture in American
airports.

Heads shaved, clad in orange and white robes, they would cluster in
busy terminals, waving Vedic literature at rushing passengers,
sometimes singing and dancing in kirtan.  Now their spiritual take-off
has been canceled – a California Supreme Court ruling prohibits the
Hare Krishnas from soliciting passengers at Los Angeles International
Airport (LAX).

Distributing literature and requesting donations have long been
regarded as free speech but the Court ruled that the LAX restriction is
constitutional, and that the Hare Krishna activities were impeding
traffic in a busy airport and also posed a security problem.

“Our reaction is disappointment because it limits our ability to
contact people and share our faith and spiritual literature,” says
Anuttama Dasa, who is a Governing Body Commissioner for ISKCON.  “We
believe these teachings offer valuable contributions in helping us to
gain peace within ourselves and peace in the world.”

(Read the full interview, and share your comments, here…)

As for me? Still processing.