COURT SEEKS VIEWS ON RACKETEERING CLAIM AGAINST ABORTION FOES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1993                   TAG: 9301200176
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: From The New York Times and The Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
COURT SEEKS VIEWS ON RACKETEERING CLAIM AGAINST ABORTION FOES
The Supreme Court asked Tuesday for the government's views on whether abortion clinics can invoke a federal racketeering law against groups that organize demonstrations and blockades aimed at shutting the clinics down.
On the eve of the inauguration, the request will give the Clinton administration an early occasion to put its views before the court in an important abortion-related case.
The lower federal courts are split over whether the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as the RICO law, applies in the context of abortion clinic blockades.
Last week the Supreme Court rejected another avenue of attack against the clinic blockades, ruling that a 19th-century federal civil rights law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act does not apply.
The court turned down a case involving the RICO question three years ago. The later case, which the Justices have yet to decide whether to accept, is an appeal of a ruling last year by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
In the appeal, the National Organization for Women is trying to use the RICO law on behalf of two abortion clinics to sue several anti-abortion groups and leaders, including Operation Rescue and the Pro-Life Action League.
The suit contends that the anti-abortion organizations were engaged in harassing and intimidating the clinics' staff and patients and that these tactics amounted to extortion, a federal crime, and turned the organizations into "racketeering enterprises" in the service of a nationwide conspiracy aimed at eliminating access to abortion.
The RICO law provides for triple damages and other heavy penalties for running an enterprise through a "pattern of racketeering activity."
The 7th Circuit, calling the anti-abortion demonstrators "reprehensible," said it was nonetheless obliged to dismiss the lawsuit, National Organization for Women vs. Scheidler. The appeals court said that in its view the RICO law applied only to an "economically motivated enterprise" or to illegal actions that are motivated by a search for economic gain.
It is this question of whether the RICO law is limited to economically motivated actions that has split the lower courts.
There is no time limit for the administration to respond to the court's request, and such responses usually take two months or more.
In other action Tuesday, the court:
Rejected an appeal by defrauded investors trying to collect on a $129 million judgment against former television evangelist Jim Bakker, convicted of bilking them in connection with his Heritage USA retreat in South Carolina.
Left intact a ruling in a Pennsylvania case that said teachers and other school officials have no constitutional duty to protect students from being sexually abused by fellow students.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB