Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9407010095
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press Note: above
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
By a 6-3 vote, the court said a state judge did not violate protesters' rights by barring them from gathering near the parking lot driveway and entrance of a Melbourne, Fla., abortion clinic.
The judge ordered protesters to keep 36 feet away from the clinic, effectively forcing them to congregate across the street.
The decision had nothing to do with the right to abortion, but rather the tactics of anti-abortion activists.
The ruling was announced minutes before the court ended a comparatively tranquil 1993-94 term by acknowledging the last day on the bench for retiring Justice Harry Blackmun. He authored the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
The ruling also could play a major role in legal challenges already mounted against a law President Clinton signed last month making it a federal crime to block access to abortion clinics.
``Taken together with the newly passed Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the court's decision provides a powerful one-two punch that anti-choice extremists will have a hard time recovering from,'' said Sally Goldfarb of the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The new law was sparked by the fatal shooting last year of Dr. David Gunn outside his Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic, and acts of violence elsewhere.
Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, said the decision carries ``devastating consequences for the pro-life movement.''
``By endorsing a zone of exclusion, the court crushes both the pro-life message and its messengers,'' Sekulow said.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the court that government ``has a strong interest in protecting a woman's freedom to seek lawful medical or counseling services in connection with her pregnancy.''
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy dissented.
``What we have decided seems to be, and will be reported by the media as, an abortion case,'' Scalia wrote for the three. ``But it will go down in the law books ... as a free-speech injunction case ... [and] ought to give all friends of liberty great concern.''
But the court also ruled, by an 8-1 vote with only Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting, that the Florida judge went too far when he barred all peaceful picketing within 300 feet of the clinic and within 300 feet of clinic employees' homes.
In other decisions Thursday, the court:
Ruled in a Florida case that federal voting rights law does not require creation of the largest possible number of minority-dominated election districts.
Upheld a Georgia county's one-commissioner form of government against a Voting Rights Act challenge that said it diluted black voters' political clout.
Upheld the death penalty law in California, the state with the most death row inmates at nearly 400.
Ruled in a Texas case that federal judges can order a death row inmate's execution postponed until a lawyer can be appointed to help prepare an appeal.
by CNB