Supreme Court declines to hear abortion clinic ‘bubble zone’ challenges

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The Supreme Court will not hear a pair of cases that may have allowed sidewalk counselors and protesters at abortion clinics to get as close as 8 feet away from people entering them.

The decision denying review of the case was announced Feb. 24.

“Our appeal may have been denied, but across this nation, at hundreds of abortion facilities, a different sort of tragic ‘denial’ continues,” stated Brian Westbrook, executive director and founder of Coalition Life, one of the involved parties. “Cities and states across America are denying sidewalk counselors and law-abiding citizens their rights to inform women about their options.”

In Turco v. City of Englewood, New Jersey, and Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Ill., lawyers for Jeryl Turco, a Catholic sidewalk counselor, and Coalition Life asked the justices to overturn the court’s 2000 precedent in Hill v. Colorado. In that decision, the Supreme Court upheld a state law making it unlawful for any person within 100 feet of an abortion clinic entrance to “knowingly approach” within 8 feet of another person, without that person’s consent, in order to do sidewalk counseling.

The St. Louis-based nonprofit Coalition Life, which specializes in sidewalk interventions, objected to a law, which has since been repealed, restricting protests outside three abortion clinics in Carbondale. It is represented by the Chicago-based Thomas More Society. Turco is represented by the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice.

The law “does not even make sense on its own terms, as distancing protestors from their intended audience undoubtedly will just necessitate already aggressive and vociferous protestors to raise the volume,” Thomas More Society lawyers said in its July filing for a writ of certiorari.

The filing argued the law “displays a willful ignorance of the type and nature of communication” by pro-life sidewalk counselors “which is not ‘demonstrating,’ but rather trying to forge an intimate connection with a woman at one of the most difficult moments of life.”

“What sidewalk counselors have found,” the filing continued, “is that, with the right approach, some women who believe that they have no option but to abort may seem like ‘unwilling listeners’ at first blush but may, in fact, be open to hearing more.”

The filing argued that the 8-foot limit prevented Coalition Life counselors from getting close enough to make eye contact.

“Coalition Life’s sidewalk counselors attempt to talk to people outside of abortion facilities and offer information about alternatives to abortion,” it stated. “The counselors get as close as possible to people in order to make eye contact and speak from a normal conversational distance in a friendly and gentle manner.”

The Turco filing from April 2024 said Jeryl Turco “has been sidewalk counseling outside MMA (Metropolitan Medical Associates) for over 15 years.” In addition, it said she “has invited some women to a pregnancy care center across the street.”

In 2014, Englewood adopted a “bubble zone” ordinance making it illegal for protesters to “knowingly enter or remain on a public way or sidewalk adjacent to a health care facility or transitional facility within a radius of eight feet of any portion of an entrance, exit or driveway of such facility.”

Carbondale adopted its ordinance in 2022, but its city council repealed the buffer zone language just 18 months later. The zones there were also 8 feet, but focused on the distances between people, not from clinic entrances.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have granted the requests to hear the cases. In a dissent on the Carbondale case, Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court should make clear that its 2000 precedent in Hill “lacks continuing force” and should be explicitly overturned.

“Buffer zones like the one at issue in Hill are ‘obviously and undeniably content based,'” Thomas said, citing earlier opinions.

“On the eve of our petition deadline, Carbondale quietly repealed its bubble zone ordinance in a shadowy, four-minute, weekend meeting, knowing full well their bubble zone would fail constitutional scrutiny if it came before the Supreme Court,” said Peter Breen, head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, in a statement.

“While our clients are now able to sidewalk counsel freely in Carbondale, the city flagrantly violated their free speech rights for 18 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,” he concluded.

Carbondale is in the southwestern corner of Illinois, making it a destination for women seeking abortions who come from nearby states that have abortion bans in place.

The high court declined a similar case in December 2023, when a Catholic activist, Debra Vitagliano, challenged a since-repealed law in Westchester County, New York.

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