Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 6, 1995 TAG: 9506060128
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices, without comment, left intact a lower court ruling that struck down an Upper Arlington, Ohio, ordinance that outlawed picketing of homes. The appeals court had ruled the law violated the protesters' rights to free speech.
In other matters, the court:
Ruled in a Maryland case that convicted federal defendants are not entitled to have their sentences reduced by the time spent on restrictive bail before they were sentenced.
Agreed to use a Michigan dispute over a car used for illegal sex to decide whether innocent owners can be forced to give up property used in a crime without their knowledge.
Said it will decide in a California case whether there is a constitutional right to a jury trial in cases seeking to have a patent declared invalid.
Monday's action in the abortion protesters' case yielded a result that appeared to move in the opposite direction of a similar case acted on by the high court just one week ago.
In the earlier case, the justices let stand an injunction barring anti-abortion demonstrators from picketing within 100 feet of the New Jersey home of a doctor who performs abortions.
In each case, the court refused to review a lower court's ruling. In the New Jersey case, however, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a seven-page opinion in which he questioned previous high court rulings on picketing by abortion protesters.
But in the Ohio case, abortion protesters emerged the legal victors.
Beginning in 1991, a group of anti-abortion activists from Dayton traveled about 75 miles to the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington at least three times to picket Dr. Raymond Robinson's home.
Robinson lives in a home located in a cul-de-sac with just three other houses.
In response to complaints about the picketing, the Upper Arlington City Council enacted an ordinance that stated, ``No person shall engage in picketing before or about the residence or dwelling of any individual in this city.''
City police invoked the ordinance in late 1992 when about 20 anti-abortion protesters tried to picket Robinson's home.
The demonstrators sued the city, but U.S. District Judge George C. Smith upheld the ordinance. after ruling that Robinson and his family ``were, in effect, trapped, unwilling recipients of (the demonstrators') speech.''
The judge noted that because of the moving picket line's length, ``at virtually any given moment, one or more of the ... (demonstrators) was in front of the doctor's house.''
Smith ordered the pickets not to get too close to Robinson's home. The order barred picketing in front of the doctor's home or the two homes on either side of his.
The demonstrators appealed, and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals objected to the judge's attempt to salvage the ordinance by creating a three-house privacy zone.
In striking down the ordinance, the 6th Circuit court relied on a 1988 Supreme Court decision. In it, the justices allowed communities to ban picketing aimed at someone's home but prohibited communities from banning pickets from marching through residential neighborhoods.
The 1988 ruling said such pickets must be allowed to walk the block on which a home they want to target is located.
by CNB