The United States Supreme Court has declined to hear a case that could have led to the reversal of a decades-old decision upholding “bubble zones” outside abortion clinics as the city at the center of the case quietly repealed its ordinance.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a law implemented by the city of Carbondale, Illinois, prohibiting pro-life protesters from sharing their message within 100 feet of abortion clinics. Coalition Life, a group of pro-life sidewalk counselors, sought relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.
While the justices declined to hear the case, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas indicated that they would have granted Coalition Life’s request for judicial review. Thomas penned a lengthy dissent explaining why he disagreed with the decision not to hear the case, which he viewed as an opportunity to reverse the 2000 Hill v. Colorado decision that upheld a similar ordinance placing limits on pro-life protesters.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.
Thomas condemned Hill as a “contradiction of more than a half century of well-established First Amendment principles,” citing a dissent authored by former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the ruling. He lamented that “the Court today declines an invitation to set the record straight on Hill’s defunct status,” noting how the justices have “long stopped applying Hill” in its decisions.
“Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,” Thomas concluded. “I would have taken this opportunity to explicitly overrule Hill.”
The Thomas More Society, which represents Coalition Life, released a statement reacting to the development Monday.
Thomas More Society Vice President and head of litigation Peter Breen noted that on Saturday, “Carbondale quietly repealed its bubble zone ordinance in a shadowy, four-minute, weekend meeting, knowing full well their bubble zone would fail constitutional scrutiny if it came before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.”
“While our clients are now able to sidewalk counsel freely in Carbondale, the city flagrantly violated their Free Speech rights for eighteen months, without penalty,” Breen added. “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.”
The Thomas More Society dismissed the argument made by Carbondale when repealing the “bubble zone” ordinance that “no credible evidence of violation” had occurred, maintaining that the move was a “transparent effort to manipulate the Court’s jurisdiction to insulate itself from review by the Supreme Court.”
Coalition Life founder and Executive Director Brian Westbrook commented on the Supreme Court’s denial of its appeal of a lower court ruling upholding the “bubble zone ordinance,” stating, “Our appeal may have been denied but across this nation, at hundreds of abortion facilities, a different sort of tragic ‘denial’ continues.”
Westbrook added, “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,” he asserted. In a separate statement, Westbrook vowed that “This fight is far from over.”
“We won’t stand idly by while millions of women are lied to and ushered down a path of pain and regret,” he said. “We won’t sit on the sidelines while millions of innocent children are murdered, discarded and literally thrown in the trash. We won’t sit by and allow American citizens to be denied their fundamental rights to free speech on the sidewalk.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
