Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 14, 1990 TAG: 9005140292
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The court, by a 5-4 vote, rejected an emergency request by five members of the group, Operation Rescue, who said the injunction is violating their free-speech rights.
The March 29 injunction permanently bars anti-abortion demonstrators within 50 feet of the property line of any Atlanta facility where abortions are performed.
Since July 1988, when Atlanta hosted the National Democratic Convention, city police have arrested 1,320 demonstrators at Operation Rescue sit-ins. Many of the protesters barricaded abortion clinics, blocking patients and employees from entering or leaving.
City officials sought and obtained the state court injunction. The Georgia Supreme Court refused on April 25 to set it aside.
Five members of Operation Rescue then sought emergency help from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who referred the request to the full court.
The court's 5-4 vote produced strange judicial bedfellows.
Joining to deny the emergency request - and thus leave the injunction intact - were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, Harry A. Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor.
Blackmun and Stevens often are characterized as liberals on issues such as abortion and free speech. Rehnquist, White and O'Connor are most often referred to as conservatives on those points.
Voting in dissent, to lift the injunction, were the court's two most consistent liberals - Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall - and two conservatives, Kennedy and Justice Antonin Scalia.
Writing for the dissenters, Kennedy cited a 1977 decision involving Nazis demonstrating in the heavily Jewish community of Skokie, Ill.
Kennedy said that decision "does not distinguish among speakers based on the content of their speech."
Operation Rescue members Michael Hirsch, Gina Robertson, William Haynes, Steve Britt and Pamela Sekulow said the Atlanta injunction deters them "from engaging in prayer, picketing, leafleting and other forms of peaceful expression on public forum streets and sidewalks."
Legal challenges to Operation Rescue demonstrations at abortion clinics have left the organization so far in debt it has closed down its national headquarters in Binghamton, N.Y.
Operation Rescue's founder, Randall Terry, spent time in jail until a contempt-of-court fine for violating a similar injunction in New York was paid.
Hirsch has stepped down as director of the group's Atlanta chapter and has not been replaced.
The case is Hirsch vs. Atlanta, A-752.
by CNB