Abortion Foes Win Legal Battle : Protests: A federal judge dismisses a suit over blockades at family planning clinics. He also vacates an injunction barring such actions.

A Los Angeles federal judge awarded a major victory to anti-abortion forces Wednesday in dismissing a lawsuit which asserted that Operation Rescue’s blockades at family planning clinics violated the civil rights of women seeking to use the clinics’ services.

U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima denied claims by the National Abortion Federation and other pro-choice groups that Operation Rescue’s actions violated a woman’s right to travel and her right to obtain an abortion.

Tashima also vacated a preliminary injunction he issued March 15 barring blockades, thus freeing abortion opponents to reinstitute such actions without fear of legal consequences in federal court.

“It’s a great result for us,” Operation Rescue attorney Victor Smith said of the decision. He said that, while Tashima’s decision “is not a world-changing decision, it will limit the tools of the opposition to interfere with the protests.”

Susan Finn, Operation Rescue’s Southern California spokeswoman, said “we’re encouraged that Judge Tashima feels that there are no grounds on a federal level to prevent Operation Rescue from saving babies and women from the destruction of abortion.”

Finn said the organization’s next major blockade is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 17, but the location has not yet been made public.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Carol Sobel, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said she will ask Tashima to stay his ruling today while she appeals it in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sobel denounced Tashima’s ruling, saying it meant, in essence, that “women are forever prisoners of their biology.” She stressed that Tashima’s decision was in conflict with a ruling by a federal appeals court in New York last September and decisions by federal judges in Oregon and Washington.

Wednesday’s ruling was not a surprise. In September, Tashima had ruled that “abortion seekers” are not a special class of people entitled to protection under the Ku Klux Klan Act, a 19th-Century civil rights law, which was the underpinning of the suit.

He wrote: “Although women, under certain circumstances, still have a constitutional right to seek an abortion, the courts have never designated ‘abortion seekers’ as a class requiring special protection. . . . The court holds that women seeking abortions is not a class intended to be protected by the Ku Klux Klan Act.”

Tashima told the plaintiffs that they could amend their complaint. But he expressed doubts about whether they could succeed.

ACLU attorneys filed new papers in the case. But in his decision Wednesday, Tashima said they had not met their burden of showing that pregnant women were entitled to protection under the 19th-Century law. He said that the ACLU had failed to prove that Operation Rescue had animus against pregnant women in general, or women as a class.

“Plaintiffs confuse effect with motive,” Tashima wrote. “While the alleged blockade/rescue actions of defendants may have” the effect described in the lawsuit on pregnant women and women in general, in order to qualify for protection under the law the ACLU had to show that Operation Rescue was hostile toward those groups.

The judge acknowledged that he had a difference of opinion with the New York appeals court.

Tashima also said the ACLU complaint did not specify what federally protected right, privilege or immunity of the plaintiffs has been infringed by the defendants’ conduct. He said the plaintiffs, to prevail, would have had to demonstrate that the government interfered with their legal rights.

The judge also stated that health care clinics were not a protected class under the Ku Klux Klan Act.

The statute was enacted during the Reconstruction Era and was designed to protect blacks from attacks by racists, but it has been applied to others since then.

Sobel, in criticizing Tashima’s opinion, said it was nonsensical to say that Operation Rescue did not have animus against women seeking clinic services, including family planning counseling.

“The fact that women and only women can get pregnant doesn’t mean they’re entitled less protection under the Constitution” than other groups covered by the law in question, Sobel said.

Sobel said that if the ACLU’s appeal is spurned, she will file a new suit in a state court seeking to enjoin Operation Rescue blockades. She said the basis would be the state Constitution’s right to privacy and the Unruh Act, which prohibits anyone from using force or coercion to prohibit someone from exercising a lawful right.

“We have constitutional and statutory rights that apply to women in California that are broader than federal rights,” the lawyer said. “Our clients will not go unprotected.”

Tashima’s decision Wednesday represented a marked shift from his earlier rulings in the case.

In March, he issued an injunction against Operation Rescue prohibiting blockades. In August, he found Operation Rescue leaders in contempt for violating the injunction and ordered them to pay $110,000 in attorneys fees incurred in bringing the contempt action on behalf of pro-choice groups. The contempt order is not affected by Wednesday’s decision.