Inc. Airport Commissioners v. Jews for Jesus

The controversy over distribution of religious and political literature on government property continued into the 1990s. In 1992, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that an airport terminal operated by a public authority is a nonpublic forum, and that a ban on solicitation need only satisfy a reasonableness standard International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee. The Krishna Consciousness case followed a 1990 Supreme Court decision by a plurality of the Court that a sidewalk on U.S. Post Office property was not a public forum United States v. Kokinda. In 1997, the city of Los Angeles enacted another ordinance banning all solicitations at city airports. The International Society of Krishna Consciousness of California and the Committee for Human Rights in Iran sued the city, alleging the ban violated the First Amendment and the California Constitution.

Attempts to further define the protections of the First Amendment also continued in Congress. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which required the government to show a compelling interest to justify any substantial restriction on religion, a traditional test that some members of Congress feared had been replaced by less restrictive standards. However, in 1997, The Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional as applied to the states in Boerne v. Flores.