Unsplash+ (left), Clarence Thomas Official portrait (right)
CV NEWS FEED // This week the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear Coalition Life v. Carbondale, a case challenging the constitutionality of “buffer zone” laws that restrict free speech outside of abortion clinics.
The Supreme Court rejected the hearing of Coalition Life v. Carbondale in a 7-2 decision, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.
Reuters reported that the case challenged a 2023 Carbondale, Illinois, city council ordinance that prevented individuals from approaching anyone else within 100 feet of a health clinic without the other person’s consent. Carbondale has since repealed the ordinance.
Pro-life organization Coalition Life had sued over the ordinance in 2023, due to its restriction of First Amendment rights. Their lawyers wrote that buffer zone laws, especially in pro-abortion areas, are a “ready tool to try to silence those who advance them [pro-life views] — and to do so precisely when and where their speech may matter most.”
In March 2024, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case based on the Supreme Court precedent set in Hill v. Colorado, which permitted buffer zones outside of abortion clinics.
The Thomas More Society explained that Carbondale repealed their ordinance the night before the high court’s petition deadline in order to avoid constitutional review before the Supreme Court. Allegedly, the meeting only took four minutes and was called at the last minute, taking place on a weekend.
“While our clients are now able to sidewalk counsel freely in Carbondale,” said Peter Breen, Thomas More Society vice president and head of litigation, “the city flagrantly violated their Free Speech rights for eighteen months, without penalty. And pro-abortion government bodies in many other cities across the country continue to unconstitutionally restrict the speech of pro-life sidewalk counselors. This game of legal Whac-A-Mole is an unsustainable dynamic, and the only solution is for the Court to overrule Hill once and for all.”
Brian Westbrook, the executive director and founder of Coalition Life, stated that his organization will continue serving women.
“Our appeal may have been denied but across this nation, at hundreds of abortion facilities, a different sort of tragic ‘denial’ continues,” he said. “Cities and states across America are denying sidewalk counselors and law-abiding citizens their rights to inform women about their options … Women are being denied true choice as they are bullied into the only option that is offered by the abortion advocates.”
