U.S. District Judge Sylvia Rambo ruled in favor of the City of Harrisburg in Reilly v. Harrisburg and denied a preliminary injunction to plaintiff-protesters, who challenged the city’s buffer zone ordinance.
The Women’s Law Project represents Planned Parenthood witnesses in the case.
Buffer zones are limited, fixed areas surrounding the entrance of a building designed to protect patients and facility employees from harassment, obstruction, and potential violence. In 2012, Harrisburg City Council unanimously passed an ordinance called “Interference with Access to Health Care Facilities” after continuous reports of harassment, obstruction and conflict outside a Planned Parenthood facility.
Under the ordinance, it is illegal for anyone other than police or emergency personnel performing official functions and facility employees helping patients enter or exit the building to “knowingly congregate, patrol, picket or demonstrate in a zone extending 20 feet from any portion of an entrance to, exit from, or driveway of a health care facility.”
Currently, the buffer zone is enforced at one healthcare facility in Harrisburg.
Protester-plaintiffs sued the city alleging the buffer zone prevents them from engaging in what they euphemistically refer to as non-consensual “sidewalk counseling” of patients coming and going from the facility.
They argued that buffer zone violates their First Amendment rights. Judge Rambo ruled it does not.
From the 45-page opinion:
“The content of even vile and hateful speech is entitled to protection; however, the First Amendment does not require the government to allow such speech to be delivered in a violent and assaultive manner. This complex question, simply put, is whether an ordinance passed by a local government entirely restrains a particular message or merely places reasonable limitation on how that message may be delivered. Upon thorough examination, this court finds that the Ordinance constitutes the latter.”
Judge Rambo noted that the protester-plaintiffs “suggest the First Amendment includes a right to intimate conversation and to ‘be so close you can reach out and hug [clinic patients].’ There is no such right to make physical contact with unconsenting strangers couched in the First Amendment.”
The Court emphasized the paramount importance of the First Amendment before articulating reasons for limits to those rights in this case and context.
“We believe there is a compelling interest in protecting women’s access to healthcare,” Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse said back in 2016, when the plaintiff-protesters filed their lawsuit. “I’ve seen the protestors. A lot of the activity is bordering on harassment. We are living in a particular day and age and climate that has been so politicized and we need a buffer zone to protect the peace.”
Reports of trespassing at independent abortion clinics tripled in 2017 and death threats or threats of harm nearly doubled, according to the National Abortion Federation.
Read the full opinion here.
The Women’s Law Project has been protecting buffer zone ordinances in Pennsylvania since 2005.
The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.
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