Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 4, 1993 TAG: 9310040058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The case is on the docket for the 1993-94 Supreme Court term that begins today.
Stephen Rosenthal, Virginia's attorney general, recently filed a brief siding with the National Organization for Women and abortion clinic owners in their appeal to ensure women's access to the clinics.
The court will review a ruling that spared Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion groups from being sued by abortion clinic operators under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
Both sides consider the case an important one because the high court in January stripped clinics of most of the protection of federal civil rights law.
That case, a victory for abortion protesters, originated in Alexandria. Then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry submitted a brief siding with the abortion clinics.
Rosenthal was elected by the General Assembly after Terry resigned in January to run for governor. He has agreed with Terry's policy on the issue, Chief Deputy Attorney General Claire Guthrie said.
Rosenthal in August added a friend-of-the-court brief, which was led by New York and also joined by attorneys general from Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio.
New York Attorney General Robert Abrams' office wrote in the brief that states need RICO in their "arsenal" of legal weapons.
The Department of Justice is one of the agencies that have filed briefs with the court backing NOW and the clinic owners.
But Jay Alan Sekulow, a lawyer for Operation Rescue, said in a brief filed last week that civil disobedience and "social or political pressure tactics are as American as apple pie."
Sekulow is a lawyer with religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice in Virginia Beach.
The RICO law was enacted in 1970. It bans any enterprise that engages "in a pattern of racketeering activity." A tripling of damages awarded for harms committed is among remedies set by the law.
Federal courts have differed in applying the RICO law to abortion protesters.
In Philadelphia and New York, courts have imposed large fines against anti-abortion groups for RICO violations. But in the case now before the Supreme Court, a federal judge and the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out RICO claims.
The 7th Circuit said RICO "requires either an economically motivated enterprise or economically motivated predicate acts," and the anti-abortion groups who were sued had no economic motive.
No date has been set for oral arguments in the Supreme Court case.
by CNB