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Life Legal Defense Foundation Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Discriminatory Massachusetts Ruling
Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312-422-1333, tc@tcpr.net
WASHINGTON, April 26, 2013 /Standard Newswire/ -- Life Legal Defense Foundation is urging the United States Supreme Court to review a First Circuit decision which severely limits free speech of pro-life advocates. In McCullen v. Coakley, seven Massachusetts residents who engaged in pro-life counseling outside of abortion clinics sued the state for violation of their right to free speech through enactment of a "bubble zone" law. The statute created a thirty-five-foot fixed buffer zone around driveways and entrances of reproductive health care facilities. The lower court upheld the buffer zone despite its prejudicial applications. Life Legal Defense Foundation has filed an amici curiae, or friends of the court brief arguing that this buffer zone is unconstitutional.
"This is clearly a case of 'viewpoint discrimination,'" stated Dana Cody, Executive Director of Life Legal Defense Foundation. "Activists who make disturbances at military funerals, animal rights protests, and 'occupy' demonstrations are not held to the stringent restrictions applied to peaceful pro-life witnesses who invite women to learn about abortion alternatives," Cody explained, "It's a true double standard and an unbelievable violation of First Amendment rights."
Adding insult to injury, the First Circuit justified singling out pro-life speech for disfavored treatment by analogizing it to sexually oriented businesses. Just as “adult” bookstores and theatres have harmful “secondary effects” that allow cities to impose special zoning restrictions, so too, according to the First Circuit, pro-life sidewalk counseling and picketing have harmful “secondary effects” that governments can mitigate by imposing buffer zones and other restrictions. In fact, what governments most fear about pro-life speech is not any “secondary effect.” It is that women heading into clinics are hearing the truth about abortion.
Life Legal Defense Foundation routinely defends the civil rights of pro-life advocates. The majority of the time, due to these efforts, the discriminatory charges are dismissed, the discriminatory application of the law is set right, and the pro-life advocates' rights are vindicated. One such case is that of Reverend Walter Hoye (www.lldf.org/pastor-hoye), who joins Life Legal Defense Foundation on the brief, was convicted of violating Oakland California's "bubble zone" ordinance. Hoye was charged and tried, even though no patient or person seeking access to the clinic complained of his conduct. After Hoye served 30 days in jail and paid a large fine, his unconstitutional conviction was overturned as a result of Life Legal Defense Foundation efforts.
Read Life Legal Defense Foundation and Walter B. Hoye II's Amici Curiae brief filed in the Supreme Court of the United States here.
About Life Legal Defense Foundation
Life Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens, committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit www.lldf.org.
