Supreme Court turns back challenges to laws keeping abortion opponents away from clinics, patients
The Supreme Court at sunset in Washington, Feb. 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear a pair of cases from abortion opponents who say laws limiting anti-abortion demonstrations near clinics violate their First Amendment rights.
The majority did not explain their reasoning for turning down the appeals, as is typical, but two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, disagreed.
The cities said the laws were passed to address disturbing behavior from protesters outside of health care clinics. But anti-abortion activists said the measures violate free-speech rights and should be on their “deathbed” after the justices overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion.
One case comes from Carbondale, Illinois, which is located near the state’s southern border and passed an ordinance after becoming a destination for patients from nearby states with abortion bans. The measure was quickly challenged in court, and has never been enforced. The city argued the appeal should be tossed because the ordinance was repealed shortly before abortion opponents went to the Supreme Court.
The other case is from New Jersey, where activist Jeryl Turco says she has approached women in Englewood for years to try to convince them not to have abortions. She says an 8-foot demonstration-free zone the city passed in 2014 in response to an aggressive group of protesters also wrongly kept her from approaching women.
Englewood argues that Turco has still been able to share her message outside of the immediate area near clinic entrances. Lower courts have ultimately upheld the ordinance, finding it isn’t a major First Amendment burden.
Both challengers pointed out that the high court struck down a Massachusetts law creating 35-foot demonstration free “buffer zones” around clinic doors in 2014. They say the Illinois and New Jersey laws should meet the same fate.
But cities say their rules are in line with a different Supreme Court decision from 2000, when the high court allowed a Colorado law to stand. It barred people from getting within 8 feet of others without permission in a 100-foot “bubble zone” around clinics.
Thomas said that case, known as Hill v. Colorado, was wrongly decided. In a dissent from the decision to decline the Illinois case, he said that the court wrongly treated it differently than other First Amendment cases because abortion was involved. “Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,” he wrote.
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Supreme Court declines chance to overturn precedent limiting protests outside abortion clinics
The Supreme Court opted against hearing arguments in a pair of appeals Monday seeking to wipe out protest buffer zones around abortion clinics – a move that, for now, will leave those restrictions in place.
Two conservative justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – said they would have heard the cases.
The precedent at issue, Thomas wrote in a brief opinion, “has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty.”
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Protected zones around clinics have been a legal issue for decades, but the fight was reanimated by the 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Most significantly, the conservative majority signaled in that opinion that it has deep reservations with the 24-year-old precedent allowing cities to create the protest-free areas.
In one case, a Missouri non-profit called Coalition Life challenged an ordinance in a Southern Illinois city, Carbondale, that bars people from coming within eight feet of a person entering a health care-facility to engage in “protest, education, or counseling.” Coalition Life organizes “sidewalk counselors” outside abortion clinics.
Carbondale ultimately repealed the ordinance this past summer.
A second appeal came from a sidewalk counselor in New Jersey, Jeryl Turco, who challenged Englewood’s eight-foot ban.
Lower courts tossed out both appeals based on a 2000 decision from the Supreme Court that upheld a similar buffer law in Colorado. But the counselors believed the time was right to revisit that precedent following the ruling two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe. Tucked into that opinion was a line asserting that the high court’s abortion precedents had “distorted First Amendment doctrines.”
That assertion carried a footnote citing the 2000 opinion on Colorado’s buffer zones.
Continuing to honor that precedent, the counselors told the Supreme Court, “is particularly problematic in the wake of Dobbs, as the whole point of that decision was to return the sensitive issue of abortion to the people.”
The counselors said the Supreme Court has been backing away from the 2000 decision anyway. In 2014, a unanimous court invalidated a Massachusetts law creating a 35-foot buffer zone around the entrances of abortion clinics.
City officials defending the zones also pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade – but for different reasons. They noted the decision had led many states to limit access to the procedure, which had led more patients – and counselors – to convene in states where abortion in clinics remains available.
“After Dobbs led to restrictions on abortion care in surrounding states and two new reproductive health care facilities opened in Carbondale, there was a marked increase in ‘acts of intimidation, threats, and interference from individuals protesting abortion access and services,’” the Illinois city said.
Lawyers for Carbondale said some protesters were blocking cars, misrepresenting themselves as medical personnel.
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