Justices to Rule on Abortion Clinic Protests : Law: Supreme Court will review a Florida order that bars shouts and pickets within 36 feet. Opponents say decision violates First Amendment.

The Supreme Court said Friday that it will rule for the first time on whether abortion protesters have a free-speech right to carry picket signs and shout slogans on the sidewalks directly outside abortion clinics.

Acting on an appeal from anti-abortion activists, the high court said it would review a Florida state judge’s order barring protesters from “congregating, picketing, patrolling (or) demonstrating” on the sidewalk or street next to a clinic in Melbourne, Fla.

Judge Robert McGregor imposed the order creating a “36-foot buffer zone” around the Aware Woman’s Center after hundreds of Operation Rescue activists had regularly gathered there and shouted “child killer” and “murderer” at doctors, nurses and patients trying to enter.

Lawyers for the protesters say the judge’s order goes too far and violates the First Amendment because it bars peaceful protest on a public sidewalk.

But lawyers for the clinic counter that no one has a right to harass and intimidate patients and doctors, even on a public sidewalk.

The case, which will be argued in April and decided by July, is likely to yield an important ruling clarifying the line between constitutionally protected protest and illegal intimidation and harassment.

Despite more than a decade of growing protests near abortion facilities, the Supreme Court has avoided a broad ruling on abortion and the First Amendment. In a narrowly worded opinion in 1988, the court said that cities can restrict groups of protesters from gathering on a residential street directly in front of the home of a doctor who performs abortions.

But otherwise, the court had passed up repeated chances to confront the issue.

Anti-abortion leaders have maintained that their movement deserves the same protection from federal courts that was given civil rights protesters in the South, who relied on marches, sit-ins and boycotts to change discriminatory laws.

The justices had little choice but to decide the Florida case since two competing appellate courts had issued conflicting rulings on McGregor’s order.

In October, a U.S. appeals court in Atlanta said that his order was unconstitutional because it “appears to criminalize various acts of peaceful protest.”

But eight days later, acting on a separate appeal, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the order did not violate the U.S. Constitution. “While the First Amendment confers on each citizen a powerful right to express oneself, it gives the picketer no boon to jeopardize the health, safety and rights of others,” the state court said.

The Aware Woman’s Center is the lone abortion facility in a generally conservative area near the Kennedy Space Center, and it became a magnet for anti-abortion protesters last year. McGregor imposed his far-reaching order on April 8, a few weeks after an abortion doctor was fatally shot outside a clinic in Pensacola.

Under the ruling, protesters could be fined as much as $500 if they came within 36 feet of the clinic. In addition, they were forbidden to accost patients or staff within 300 feet of the clinic to try to hand them anti-abortion literature or dissuade them from entering the facility.

The court announced it would hear the case (Madsen vs. Women’s Health Center, 93-880) on the same day that an estimated 35,000 anti-abortion activists marched in front of the Supreme Court building in their annual protest of the Roe vs. Wade ruling guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion.

The Supreme Court usually releases a list on Monday mornings of the appeals that will be given a court hearing and those that are dismissed without comment. But recently it has given lawyers a few extra days for preparation by announcing on Friday afternoons those cases that will be heard.