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Legal Principle at Issue

Does the Massachusetts law establishing buffer zones around abortion clinics violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech?

Action

The Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the Massachusetts buffer zone law violated the First Amendment. The Court acknowledged the law was content-neutral (it did not target speech based on its message), but content neutrality alone does not make a law constitutional. In this case, the law was not narrowly tailored to serve the government’s interests. While the state had legitimate interests in ensuring public safety and access to healthcare, the buffer zone burdened substantially more speech than necessary. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that public sidewalks are a traditional public forum where speech enjoys heightened protection and noted that Massachusetts could have used less restrictive means, such as enforcing existing laws against harassment or obstruction.

Facts/Syllabus

In 2007, Massachusetts amended its Reproductive Health Care Facilities Act, which had been enacted in 2000 to address clashes between abortion opponents and advocates of abortion rights outside clinics where abortions were performed. The amended version of the Act makes it a crime to knowingly stand on a “public way or sidewalk” within 35 feet of an entrance or driveway to any “reproductive health care facility,” defined as “a place, other than within or upon the grounds of a hospital, where abortions are offered or performed.” 

Petitioner Eleanor McCullen and other anti-abortion activists attempt to engage women approaching Massachusetts abortion clinics in “sidewalk counseling,” which involves offering information about alternatives to abortion and help pursuing those options. They claim that the 35-foot buffer zones have displaced them from their previous positions outside the clinics, considerably hampering their counseling efforts. Their attempts to communicate with patients are further thwarted, they claim, by clinic “escorts” who accompany arriving patients through the buffer zones to the clinic entrances.

Petitioners sued Massachusetts Attorney General Coakley and other Commonwealth officials, seeking to enjoin the Act’s enforcement on the ground that it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, both on its face and as applied to them. The District Court denied both challenges, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed. With regard to petitioners’ facial challenge, the First Circuit held that the Act was a reasonable “time, place, and manner” regulation under the test set forth in Ward v. Rock Against Racism.

Importance of Case

The ruling reaffirmed strong protections for free speech in public forums and limited the ability of governments to impose broad buffer zones around abortion clinics.