Abortion Foes Fail to Overturn $99,106 Legal Award to Clinic

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by five anti-abortion demonstrators who had been ordered to pay nearly $100,000 in lawyer fees spent by a Sacramento abortion clinic they targeted.

The court, without comment, let stand rulings that said the legal fee award did not violate or wrongly “chill” the abortion protesters’ free-speech rights.

The Feminist Women’s Health Center operates four medical clinics in Northern California, including one in Sacramento that since 1988 has been the scene of abortion protests.

Some of the demonstrators merely picket peaceably, but others on occasion have blocked the clinic’s entrance or harassed its patients and staff members.

The center’s operators sued in state court in 1989, naming five protesters, Operation Rescue and others as defendants.

The lawsuit sought to bar the demonstrators from taking certain action and sought to have them pay all lawyer fees in connection with the litigation.

Operation Rescue and the other defendants did not show up to defend themselves and lost by default. After trial, a state judge ruled against the five protesters.

The judge imposed a “speech-free zone” within 20 feet of the clinic entrance and ordered the five defendants who went to trial to pay $99,106.98 for lawyer fees incurred by the clinic’s operators.

A California appeals court upheld the injunction and the award in March, and the state Supreme Court refused to hear the five protesters’ appeal in June.

In the appeal acted on Monday, lawyers for the five protesters argued that they were being punished unfairly.

“There was no evidence that . . . [the five] were members of or affiliated with Operation Rescue,” the appeal said. “There was also no evidence that . . . [they] engaged in any blockades, vandalism, batteries, or other violent or destructive conduct.”

Lawyers for the abortion clinic urged the justices to reject the appeal, contending that the five protesters’ conduct “exceeded the protection afforded by the First Amendment.”

They said the five tried to prevent patients from getting out of their cars, yelled at patients and even chased them.