Pro-life group asks Supreme Court to throw out abortion ‘buffer zone’ laws
Sarah Richardson, a sidewalk counselor with Coalition Life in Carbondale, Illinois. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Thomas More Society St. Louis, Mo., Nov 19, 2024 / 09:15 am (CNA).
A St. Louis pro-life group has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional a rural Illinois town’s now-defunct “buffer zone” law, which previously impeded the group’s peaceful protests and counseling outside the town’s abortion clinics.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether or not it will take up the case on Nov. 22.
The case, Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois, concerns a law restricting protests outside three abortion clinics in Carbondale, a small college town about two hours southeast of St. Louis and three hours north of Memphis, Tennessee, both major cities in states that currently have strong pro-life protections in place.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Illinois leaders have leaned in to the state’s status as a destination for women seeking abortions throughout the Midwest. Democratic leaders in the state had been expanding protections for abortion in the state for years before the fall of Roe, removing all criminal penalties for performing abortions and lifting regulations on clinics.
Notably, in 2019, Planned Parenthood opened an 18,000-square-foot, $ 7 million “mega” abortion clinic in southern Illinois just a dozen miles from downtown St. Louis, originally expected to see 11,000 patients a year.
Coalition Life, a St. Louis-based pro-life organization, had been engaging in peaceful sidewalk counseling of women outside Carbondale’s abortion clinics, offering information about free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, STD testing, and recommending “options coaching” at a pro-life pregnancy center.
The pro-life group was engaged in this work until the town, citing what people associated with the abortion clinic described as “aggressive and misleading tactics,” amended its “disorderly conduct” ordinance to criminalize approaching within eight feet of another person without their consent for purposes of protest, education, or counseling within 100 feet of a health care facility.
Such ordinances, which have been enacted in various local municipalities and at least three states at large across the country, are often known as “buffer zone” or “bubble zone” laws.
Buffer zone laws
Carbondale’s ordinance was modeled after a Colorado law upheld in the seminal 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case Hill v. Colorado, a precedent that has faced numerous legal challenges from pro-life advocates over the years as pro-lifers argue such laws chill their right to free speech. In 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case, which challenged a “bubble zone” ordinance in Westchester County, New York.
The Supreme Court has ruled in the past, however, against very large buffer zones, striking down a 35-foot buffer zone ordinance in Massachusetts in McCullen v. Coakley in 2014. In 2020, though, the high court turned away challenges to eight-foot and 20-foot buffer zones in Chicago and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, citing the Hill precedent.
Coalition Life is asking the Supreme Court to overturn Hill v. Colorado, which it says would allow ordinances and laws nationwide modeled after the Colorado statute to be challenged and potentially struck down, creating a more level playing field for public discourse on abortion, especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade returned the issue of abortion policy to the states.
A federal district court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 7th Circuit have already ruled against Coalition Life in the case, and a similar case challenging a buffer zone law in Englewood, New Jersey, has also faced roadblocks in federal courts.
Peter Breen, the executive vice president and head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, which is helping to represent Coalition Life, said in a statement that “Hill v. Colorado was egregiously wrong on the day it was decided, and it remains a black mark in our law to this day.”
“‘Bubble zones,’ like the one in Carbondale, are an unconstitutional and overzealous attempt to show favor to abortion businesses at the expense of the free speech rights of folks who seek to offer information, alternatives, and resources to pregnant women in need,” Breen added.
“It’s time to end, once and for all, the political gamesmanship places like Carbondale play with our free speech rights.”
According to Capitol News Illinois, this past July the Carbondale City Council quietly and unanimously repealed the buffer zone language from its disorderly conduct code — which had been in place only 18 months and was never enforced — only a few days prior to Coalition Life’s petition to the Supreme Court.
Opportunity to correct ‘flawed precedent’
Coalition Life argues in its petition to the Supreme Court that its case presents a clear opportunity to correct a flawed precedent that continues to undermine First Amendment rights, adding that Carbondale’s attempt to moot the case by repealing the ordinance highlights the urgent need for the Supreme Court to act.
Carbondale and other municipalities will readily reenact similar ordinances if the Supreme Court declines to take up the case, the group argues.
“It took them four minutes to repeal that, and assuming that we stopped fighting, it will take them four minutes to put the bubble zone back in,” Coalition Life founder Brian Westbrook told Capitol News Illinois.
