Supreme Court Backs
Abortion Protesters
in Unanimous Ruling
By DAVID STOUT,
NYTimes on the Web, February 28, 2006
WASHINGTON, -- Anti-abortion
groups gained a victory in the Supreme Court today as the justices ruled, 8 to
0, that abortion clinics cannot rely on federal laws against racketeering and
extortion to prevent demonstrations against abortions.
The opinion by Justice Stephen G. Breyer turned on two words. The justices
ruled that clinics could not use the decades-old Hobbs Act, which outlaws the
obstruction of commerce by "robbery or extortion," to stymie protesters.
"Physical violence unrelated to robbery or extortion falls outside the Hobbs
Act's scope," Justice Breyer wrote. To try to use the act as the National
Organization for Women and other abortion-rights advocates have done "broadens
the Hobbs Act's scope well beyond what case law has assumed," he wrote.
Moreover, the ruling noted, Congress specifically addressed the needs of
abortion clinics and their patients in 1994, when it passed legislation that
makes it a federal crime to attack or blockade abortion clinics, their operators
or their patrons. By its actions in 1994, Congress suggested that the much
older Hobbs act did not address anti-abortion protests, Justice Breyer wrote.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not take part in today's ruling. He took
his seat on the court after the case, Scheidler v. National Organization for
Women, No. 04-1244, was argued last Nov. 30.
The ruling today marked the third time the justices have addressed the
long-running dispute over how federal law applies to blockades of abortion
clinics. The Hobbs Act, enacted in 1946 to supersede a 1934
anti-racketeering statute, specifically outlaws the obstruction of commerce "by
robbery or extortion."
Two violations of the Hobbs Act, in turn, can demonstrate a "pattern of
racketeering activity" that entitles victims to triple damages under the 1970
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
In the 1980's, the National Organization for Women and two abortion clinics sued
Operation Rescue and the Pro-Life Action League under the Hobbs Act. In
1994, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that abortion clinics could use that
statute, but that they had to prove in court that the actions of protesters were
part of a "pattern of racketeering activity."
But later, after the anti-abortion groups won in the lower federal courts, the
Supreme Court reversed its own ruling, holding in 2003 that the protesters'
behavior around clinics did not amount to extortion, or trying to obtain
another's property through real or threatened "force, violence or fear."
The justices found in the 2003 ruling that the 117 specific acts described in
the lawsuit did not meet that definition, and they sent the case back to the
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. But instead of
dismissing the suit, the Seventh Circuit kept it alive on the basis of four
additional actions of protest that the Supreme Court had not reviewed, and it
ordered the Federal District Court in Chicago to determine whether those four
actions might fall under the Hobbs Act.
In their latest appeal to the Supreme Court, Joseph Scheidler, the national
director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, and his allies argued that
the Seventh Circuit had misread the 2003 Supreme Court ruling and ought to have
dismissed the entire lawsuit.
"I am mystified that I had to go to the trouble and expense of appearing before
the Supreme Court three times," Mr. Scheidler said today, in a statement issued
in Chicago. He said NOW had refused to acknowledge defeat and had
persuaded the Seventh Circuit to keep the case alive "in spite of the Supreme
Court's clear mandate to end it" in 2003.
Mr. Scheidler's lawyer, Thomas Brejcha, called today's ruling "not just a
victory for pro-life activists, but for anyone who chooses to exercise his First
Amendment rights to effect social change."
|
