NOW Seeks to Use Rackets Law on Abortion Foes

Lawyers for the National Organization for Women urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to stretch the powerful federal anti-racketeering law to combat “a nationwide campaign of terror” by militant foes of abortion.

Extremists have used arson, bombing, burglary and extortion to shut medical facilities that perform abortion, NOW attorney Fay Clayton told the justices. The 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was first intended to combat the Mafia, she said, but its broad language applies to any “enterprise (or) association” that engages in organized crime.

“We are asking this court to apply the statute as Congress wrote it,” Clayton said.

But Notre Dame University law professor Robert Blakey, representing the Pro-Life Action League, countered that the law was designed to punish those who seek “illicit gain,” not social and political protesters.

The law should cover someone like John Gotti, the convicted New York Mafia boss, but “not a Gandhi or a Chavez,” Blakey said. Indian nationalist leader Mohandas K. Gandhi used nonviolent protest to help free his country from British rule, and farm workers’ leader Caesar Chavez organized boycotts of grapes to pressure growers and to win union contracts.

However, several justices moved to cut off Blakey’s argument about peaceful protest because that issue was not raised in the appeal to the high court.

The racketeering law authorizes damage suits against an enterprise that engages in crimes such as murder, kidnaping, arson or fraud. It can be enforced through criminal or civil proceedings and carries much stiffer penalties than do other laws against such crimes. It also gives authorities more power to prosecute people involved on the edges of a criminal enterprise.

If the high court permits NOW to proceed with its lawsuit under the racketeering law--and that possibility looked more likely given remarks made by justices during the argument--NOW’s lawyers will have to prove at a trial that anti-abortion leaders committed crimes against the abortion clinics.

But the Pro-Life Action League will also be permitted to defend itself by citing the First Amendment and its traditional protection for peaceful protest.

The outcome in the case (NOW vs. Schiedler, 92-780), took on added significance earlier this year as abortion clinic operators scrambled to find some legal protection under federal law. In a 5-4 ruling, the high court had forbidden prosecution of abortion protesters under the old Ku Klux Klan Act, which outlawed conspiracies to deprive people of their constitutional rights.

In June, the U.S. appeals court in Chicago dealt the clinic officials another blow when it ruled that the racketeering law can be used only against groups that act with an “economic motive.” Since anti-abortion activists do not seek money, they cannot be charged with violating the law, the lower court said.

Clinton Administration lawyers joined NOW in appealing that issue, noting that they want to use the law against terrorists, such as those who bombed the World Trade Center.

During the last 23 years, the racketeering law has been used against a multitude of criminals, ranging from mobsters and murderers to stock manipulators and pornographers. If convicted under the law, criminals can be forced to pay triple damages.