Supreme Court Rejects Challenge To Law Restricting Pro-Life Speech Outside Abortion Facilities

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to restrictions that had been placed on pro-life speech and protest activity within 100 feet of an abortion-providing facility. 

The case arose after the pro-life group Coalition Life challenged a Carbondale, Illinois, ordinance that restricted pro-life sidewalk counseling within 100 feet of an abortion facility. The policy, which was first implemented in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, was repealed by the city as Coalition Life prepared its appeal to the Supreme Court. 

Both Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said that they would have heard the challenge. 

In a dissent, Thomas wrote that he would have ruled to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado, which upheld a Colorado law that required a pro-life protester or counselor to obtain consent to approach within eight feet of a person in a 100-foot radius around an abortion facility. 

“Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,” Thomas wrote in his dissent. “I would have taken this opportunity to explicitly overrule Hill.”

Thomas wrote that the majority in Hill minimized the restrictions it placed on free speech and said the majority erroneously decided that buffer zone laws were content-neutral. 

“Hill’s abortion exceptionalism turned the First Amendment upside down,” Thomas wrote, saying that “constitutional rights hang in the balance” while the Supreme Court doesn’t reevaluate the Hill decision. 

Coalition Life, which trains sidewalk counselors to urge women not to get abortions and provide them information about other options, was represented by lawyers with the Thomas More Society and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement. 

Peter Breen, the head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, said that the only reason Carbondale repealed its ordinance was to escape Supreme Court scrutiny. 

“On the eve of our petition deadline, Carbondale quietly repealed its bubble zone ordinance in a shadowy, four-minute, weekend meeting, knowing full well their bubble zone would fail constitutional scrutiny if it came before the Supreme Court,” Breen said. “While our clients are now able to sidewalk counsel freely in Carbondale, the city flagrantly violated their Free Speech rights for eighteen months, without penalty.”

Coalition Life Executive Director Brian Westbrook said that his group would continue its work despite the court’s decision. 

“Our appeal may have been denied but across this nation, at hundreds of abortion facilities, a different sort of tragic ‘denial’ continues,” he said. “Cities and states across America are denying sidewalk counselors and law-abiding citizens their rights to inform women about their options… Women are being denied true choice as they are bullied into the only option that is offered by the abortion advocates.”