The Fight Over Free Speech Heats Up. Women In Crisis Could Pay The Price.

A pro-life group challenged a Detroit ordinance creating a speech buffer zone around abortion facilities, arguing that the city’s policy violates the First Amendment.

The group Sidewalk Advocates for Life sued Detroit in federal court on Wednesday over an ordinance it passed instituting a 15 foot buffer zone around all abortion facilities where pro-life advocates cannot enter. The ordinance also creates an eight foot floating buffer within 100 feet of an abortion facility for any client.

“The Ordinance, which is enforceable through criminal penalties, violates the Free Speech, Free Exercise, and Freedom of Assembly Clauses of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as the Michigan Constitution,” said the lawsuit, which was filed by the Thomas More Society.

Kevin Hammer, a member of Sidewalk Advocates, said that the ordinance bans him from handing out pro-life literature while holding a sign reading “Ask Me About Free Ultrasounds and Pregnancy Tests” outside of the Scotsdale Women’s Center in Detroit, Michigan.

“Our Sidewalk Advocates stand on public sidewalks offering a gentle word and information to women who are willing to receive it—that is what this ordinance criminalizes,” said Lauren Muzyka, the president and CEO of Sidewalk Advocates for Life.

The suit points out that a recent decision from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar ordinance implemented by Pittsburgh. The court said that the buffer zone ordinance was overly burdensome on free speech.

Detroit’s ordinance was passed in 2024 and says that “no person, within a 100-foot radius of any entrance door to a healthcare facility, shall knowingly approach within eight feet of another person for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education or counseling with such other person in the public right-of-way unless such other person consents.”

The suit says that this stipulation substantially burdens speech and does not serve a compelling government interest.

“This ordinance does not protect anyone,” said Thomas More Society head of litigation Peter Breen. “It makes it a crime to stand on a public sidewalk and offer a woman a choice. The government cannot wall off the public square so that women never hear they have alternatives to abortion.”