Court to Review Abortion Protest Ruling

The Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law aimed primarily at battling the Mafia may be used to sue protesters who block women’s access to abortion clinics.

The court said Monday that it will review a ruling that spared Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups from being sued by abortion clinic operators under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

A decision is expected sometime in 1994.

The news was welcome for the abortion rights movement, which five months ago suffered a major setback when the high court ruled that federal judges cannot stop abortion clinic blockades.

But it was not well-received at Operation Rescue. “If Operation Rescue loses this case, then freedom of speech is dead,” said founder Randy Terry. “Any politically unpopular protest group could be accused of racketeering and conspiracy for their activities.”

The justices in January ruled that federal judges may not stop abortion clinic blockades by invoking an 1871 civil rights law, popularly called the Ku Klux Klan Act. The act bans conspiracies aimed at violating constitutional rights.

The latest appeal, filed by the National Organization for Women and abortion clinic owners, said anti-abortion groups make up “a nationwide criminal conspiracy of extremists” bent on “unlawful and violent methods” to drive abortion clinics out of business.

Asked by the justices for its views, the Clinton Administration said a federal appeals court was wrong in ruling that the federal law could not be used to sue Operation Rescue.

The RICO law, enacted in 1970, originally was aimed at organized crime but increasingly is used in lawsuits involving just about any business dispute.

The law bans “any person employed or associated with any enterprise in . . . interstate or foreign commerce . . . to participate in a pattern of racketeering activity.”

Under RICO, a pattern of racketeering amounts to two or more “predicate acts” from a long list of underlying crimes, including extortion.

Numerous lawsuits accused Operation Rescue and the other anti-abortion groups of extortion.

As its 1992-93 term wound down to its final weeks, the court also took these actions:

* Revived a challenge to a Jacksonville, Fla., affirmative action program attacked for allegedly violating the rights of companies owned by white men.

* Barred the Cheyenne River Sioux from regulating hunting and fishing by non-Indians at Lake Oahe on the tribe’s reservation in South Dakota.