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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 29, 1994                   TAG: 9404290137
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINIC'S INJUNCTION MAY INHIBIT FREE SPEECH, HIGH COURT HINTS

The Supreme Court appeared sympathetic Thursday to an argument that a judicial order intended to keep anti-abortion demonstrators from harassing a Florida clinic's patients and staff was so broad as to violate the First Amendment.

Even some justices who support the right to abortion expressed concern about the scope of the challenged injunction, which keeps demonstrators from entering a 36-foot buffer zone around the Aware Woman Center for Choice in Melbourne, Fla.

The state court's injunction also bars demonstrators from making uninvited approaches to individual patients within 300 feet of the clinic and from gathering within 300 feet of staff members' homes.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested at one point that injunctions had to be scrutinized with "particular care," given the "long history" of injunctions being used to curb civil rights marchers, student demonstrators and labor union picketers.

Solicitor General Drew Days, who was defending the Florida injunction on behalf of the Clinton administration, argued that courts had to be able to issue orders of this type and to tailor them to the particular problems presented by each case.

"Yes, but doesn't that ability have to be accompanied by special solicitude for free speech rights?" Justice Anthony Kennedy interjected. "Certain people are being singled out."

Both Days and Talbot D'Alem-berte, the lawyer representing the Melbourne clinic, argued that the purpose of the injunction was not to limit speech but to keep the demonstrators from achieving their stated aim of shutting the clinic down.

Judge Robert B. McGregor of the Florida Circuit Court issued the order in April 1993 after an earlier, more narrowly drawn injunction had failed to control the noisy crowds that gathered regularly after Operation Rescue and other groups made the clinic the target of sustained protest in 1991.

"It's not a matter of what's being said," D'Alemberte told the court. "It's what these defendants have done."

But Justice Antonin Scalia disputed D'Alemberte's assertion. "You know what kind of speech you're stopping," Scalia said. "Any injunction against this group is de facto content-directed."

by CNB