WASHINGTON (ABP) — On a day when anti-abortion protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court's building, the justices inside concerned themselves with a decades-old case on whether federal law can ban certain protests at abortion clinics.
The Nov. 30 arguments in two combined cases were highly technical and served as a prelude to the much more highly publicized case on a New Hampshire abortion law that followed, during the day's second argument session.
At issue in the first set of cases is whether the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and related legislation, originally aimed at the tactics of mobsters, can be applied to ban protests at abortion clinics.
The high court already ruled in 2003 that the law, known as RICO, cannot be used to ban protests that simply interrupt business at abortion clinics. However, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that other parts of the law may allow abortion providers to sue protestors.
The justices are expected to decide the cases before the end of their 2005-2006 term next summer.
The dispute had its beginnings in the 1980s, when a series of coordinated protests by anti-abortion-rights groups such as Operation Rescue caused havoc at abortion clinics nationwide. In an earlier ruling, the court invalidated a federal jury's finding that the Pro-Life Action Network had violated anti-racketeering laws in 117 incidents. The justices said the protesters did not extort goods or money out of the clinics.
But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reviewing the case, ruled that there were four other incidents that involved threats of violence by abortion clinic protesters rather than the interruption of commerce — and that those threats were still punishable under federal law. The abortion protesters appealed that ruling back to the Supreme Court.
In the latest arguments, the justices seemed most concerned with whether federal a phrase in a related federal law, the Hobbs Act, applied to the behavior or not. At question is whether a proper interpretation of the law made the act applicable to all threats of violence associated with interstate commerce or only those associated with extortion or racketeering.
“It is the position of the United States that the physicial-violence clause of the Hobbs Act” must be tied to extortion or racketeering activities, said Lisa Blatt, an assistant solicitor general who argued on behalf of the Bush administration in favor of the abortion protesters.
Justice Stephen Breyer expressed concern that the 7th Circuit's reading of the law was so broad that it would endanger picket-line activities by labor unions that could be interpreted as violent threats.
Breyer cited a friend-of-the-court brief the AFL-CIO filed in favor of the abortion protesters, which said the 7th Circuit's interpretation of the Hobbs Act would turn “virtually every threat of violence anywhere in the United States into a serious federal crime” and open striking workers and social activists to lawsuits.
The cases are Scheider v. National Organization for Women (No. 04-1244) and Operation Rescue v. National Organization for Women (No. 04-1352).