Use of Anti-Racketeer Law on Abortion Foes Upheld : Free Speech Arguments Discounted

The Supreme Court turned away free-speech arguments today and allowed the use of a federal racketeering law against 26 anti-abortion protesters in Philadelphia.

The court let stand a successful lawsuit against the protesters by the operators of an abortion clinic in that city.

Similar lawsuits, each invoking the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), have been filed against anti-abortion activists in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Brookline, Mass.

The litigation strategy has proved troubling to some abortion rights advocates, who fear that all political protesters will be labeled “racketeers” and held financially liable for doing nothing more than expressing their views.

But in upholding a $108,000 award against the 26 Philadelphia protesters last March, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals said their actions “went beyond . . . constitutional rights of speech and protest.”

‘One Battle’

The protesters on four occasions from 1984 to 1986 unlawfully entered the Northeast Women’s Center in Philadelphia. According to trial testimony, protesters threw medical supplies on the floor, damaged equipment, assaulted the clinic’s employees and harassed patients.

Today’s action does not preclude the nation’s highest court from granting review in some future case in which more peaceable anti-abortion demonstrators are sued under the racketeering law.

“This is one battle in a long war,” said Michael McMonagle, one of the 26 Philadelphia protesters and executive director of the Pro-Life Coalition of Southeast Pennsylvania.

Edmond A. Tiryak, the clinic’s lawyer, said the Supreme Court action “shows that our society will not tolerate the use of fear and intimidation by religious fanatics to impose their will on women seeking abortion services.”

In their appeal, the 26 protesters decried “an unprecedented and dangerous expansion of” the federal law aimed primarily at fighting organized crime. They said the law was being used to stifle political expression.

“Under the 3rd Circuit’s interpretations of RICO . . . Martin Luther King was a racketeer when he trespassed on private property and conspired with others in an attempt to change the business policies of owners of segregated lunch counters,” the appeal contended.

No Profit Motive

“So, too, is anyone participating in a sit-in against apartheid with the goal of changing the investment policies of a university,” the appeal said, arguing that no RICO violation should be found if no economic profit motive exists.

Only Justice Byron R. White, who cited a split among federal appeals courts over the for-profit requirement in RICO cases, voted to study the Philadelphia protesters’ appeal. The votes of four justices are needed to grant such review.

In other action, the court:

--Agreed to clarify when sentencing judges may hand down extra prison time for habitual criminals.

--Agreed to resolve a dispute in the federal prosecution of nine Puerto Rico men accused of robbing $7.2 million from a Wells Fargo depot six years ago.