White House asks justices to stay out of abortion case

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to reject a politically charged abortion case that seeks free-speech protection for protesters who used “wanted” posters to target doctors.

The White House said the court should leave undisturbed a ruling against anti-abortion protesters for listing personal information about abortion clinic employees on the Internet and on posters.

The Supreme Court asked for the government’s views in the case in December and delayed acting on the appeal by activists who were ordered to pay nearly $110 million in punitive damages. The administration brief was filed Friday and made public Monday.

The justices probably will decide this month whether to hear the case, which involves a law that protects access to abortion clinics. Justices often – but not always – follow the recommendations of the government.

After three doctors listed on Old West-style wanted posters were killed in the 1990s, other physicians sued, claiming they feared for their lives after being included in a round of posters.

Anti-abortion activists were accused of violating a racketeering law and the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The activists maintain that their activities are protected free speech.

Their attorney, Edward White III, said he was disappointed that the Bush administration opposed the appeal. “We think that the United States of America should support the free speech of all groups,” he said.

The case raises some of the same issues as the appeal by several men who were punished for burning crosses in Virginia. Justices ruled in April that a burning cross is an instrument of racial terror so threatening it overshadows free-speech concerns.

“Wanted-style posters targeting abortion providers do not have as extensive an association with violence as does cross burning; for example, at the time of the events at issue here, only three abortion providers had been killed after the issuance of posters identifying them,” while other doctors on posters were never hurt, Solicitor General Theodore Olson wrote for the government.

But he said that a lower court concluded that there was reason to feel threatened by poster listings.

That court conclusion should not be second-guessed by the justices, he wrote.

“It sounds to me like an artful dodge,” said Stephen Crampton, chief attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy in Tupelo, Miss., which has encouraged the court to review the case.

He said that even though President Bush is against abortion, it was not surprising that his administration would not want to “open that can of worms at the Supreme Court and publicly take a stand” on anti-abortion protests.

Tuesday, June 3, 2003

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