High Court Bars Abortion Protests : Justices Uphold Demonstration Ban at Atlanta Clincs

The Supreme Court refused today to let an anti-abortion group protest at abortion clinics in Atlanta, voting 5 to 4 to leave intact a Georgia judge’s injunction.

The vote focused on free-speech rights more than abortion and crossed ideological lines.

The court rejected an emergency request by five members of Operation Rescue who said the injunction is violating their free-speech rights.

In Atlanta, Operation Rescue spokesman Bob Jewitt called today’s action “a little stumble along the way,” adding, “We feel we’ll be victorious in the long run.”

Lynne Randall, who operates a clinic that has been a frequent target of the protests, welcomed the action. “We have to balance women’s right to privacy with people’s right to protest,” she said.

The controversy is still alive in the Georgia courts, but today’s action means Operation Rescue protesters for now cannot go within 50 feet of the property line of any Atlanta facility where abortions are performed.

In another matter, the court heard a spirited debate over flag burning, an issue with big political stakes and clashing views over patriotism and freedom of expression.

The court must decide by July whether a federal law protecting Old Glory from desecration is constitutional.

The court’s vote in the Operation Rescue case from Atlanta yielded strange judicial bedfellows.

Voting to lift the March 29 injunction were the court’s two most consistent liberals, Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, and two of its most conservative members, Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Antonin Scalia.

Brennan and Marshall are strong supporters of abortion rights but are also strong supporters of free-speech rights. Kennedy and Scalia oppose broad abortion rights but have more moderate track records on free-speech issues.

Writing for the four, Kennedy cited the court’s 1977 decision that refused to block Nazis from marching in the heavily Jewish community of Skokie, Ill.

Kennedy said the 1977 ruling “does not distinguish among speakers based on the content of their speech.”

But Justice John Paul Stevens, who cast a decisive vote to leave intact the Atlanta injunction, said the court was not drawing any content-of-speech distinctions.

Stevens noted that in 1977 the American Nazi Party “did not have a similar history of illegal conduct in the jurisdiction where the march was scheduled,” and he called Operation Rescue members “a class of persons who have persistently and repeatedly engaged in unlawful conduct.”

Also voting to leave the injunction intact were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, Harry A. Blackmun and Sandra Day O’Connor.

Stevens and Blackmun are strong supporters of abortion rights. Rehnquist, White and O’Connor are not.

Since July, 1988, when Atlanta hosted the National Democratic Convention, city police have arrested 1,320 demonstrators at Operation Rescue sit-ins. Many of the protesters barricaded abortion clinics, stopping patients and employees from entering or leaving.