The Supreme Court declined to take up cases challenging abortion clinic “buffer zones” that impose protest restrictions around abortion clinics in Illinois and New Jersey.
The high court’s decision against overruling a 25-year-old decision was blasted by Justice Clarence Thomas in a dissent issued Monday as SCOTUS rejected appeals in the Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois case.
“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. “This case would have allowed us to provide needed clarity to lower courts.”
Justice Samuel Alito also disagreed with the court’s decision but did not write a dissenting opinion.
a 6-3 conservative supreme court still refuses to overturn Hill, one of the most egregious abortion-distortion and anti-free speech precedents on the books. https://t.co/EPRQzwhs7v
— ᴊᴏᴇ ❤️ (@traddingtonbear) February 24, 2025
Coalition Life, the anti-abortion group that organizes “sidewalk counseling,” requested to overturn the precedent banning pro-life activists from approaching anyone who may be entering an abortion clinic. The effort was supported by anti-abortion groups, 15 Republican state attorneys general, and the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Lower courts upheld ordinances in Carbondale, Ill., and Englewood, N.J., under the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado,
According to CBS News:
The ordinance enacted in Carbondale came just six months after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rolled back the constitutional right to abortion. Known as the “Disorderly Conduct Ordinance,” the restriction was put in place in response to the high court’s ruling, as reproductive health care clinics in the city reported an uptick of threats and acts of intimidation by people protesting abortion access.
….
Carbondale’s measure created a 100-foot buffer zone around the entrance to health care facilities. Activists were prohibited from coming within eight feet of a person to give them a “leaflet or handbill,” display a sign or engage in “oral protest, education or counseling” inside the perimeter.
The ordinance was repealed several months after it took effect in January 2023. Coalition Life had argued that it violated the First Amendment.
In the petition challenging the Carbondale ordinance, attorney Paul Clement argued that “Hill was wrong the day it was decided, and the case for overruling it has only strengthened ever since.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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