Pro-life protest at Planned Parenthood (Photo: Flickr/Fibonacci Blue)
Katelynn Richardson
Daily Caller News Foundation
A pro-life advocate is challenging a Colorado law that restricts speech outside of abortion centers — along with the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision upholding the law.
Wendy Faustin argues Colorado’s law, which prohibits approaching another person on sidewalks within a 100-foot radius of a medical facility “for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill” or “engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling,” violates the First Amendment. It makes sidewalk counseling “impossible,” targets one side of the debate on abortion and “unquestionably discriminates based on the content—and even the viewpoint—of speech,” Faustin’s lawsuit alleges.
“The government may not target life-affirming speech simply because it disagrees with the message,” Roger Byron, Senior Counsel for First Liberty Institute, said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That is unlawful viewpoint discrimination. It should not be a crime to lovingly and compassionately approach another person to tell them about alternatives to abortion.”
Faustin’s request for an injunction against the law runs contrary to current Supreme Court precedent. In its Hill v. Colorado decision, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the law is a “regulation of the places where some speech may occur,” not a regulation of the speech itself.
Faustin, backed by the First Liberty Institute and the law firm Cooper & Kirk, PLLC., suggests the case was “wrongly decided.”
“[F]or the reasons explained by the dissents in that case and in later Supreme Court precedent, that case was wrongly decided, is irreconcilable with intervening precedent, and has severely ‘distorted First Amendment doctrines,'” the lawsuit states, referencing the Court’s June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade
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The late Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent to Hill v. Colorado joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, wrote that the First Amendment is “a dead letter” if protecting people from “unwelcome communications” serves a compelling state interest.
Byron told the Daily Caller News Foundation the case was “recognized at the time as bad First Amendment law.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and the City of Denver did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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IMPORTANT NOTE: “Election denier!” “Science denier!” “Climate-change denier!” “Conspiracy theorist!” And then there’s “hate speech,” “fake news,” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” even something called “MALinformation.” A bizarre new lexicon has been conjured up by America’s elites, the SOLE PURPOSE of which is to discredit and ridicule – and if at all possible, CENSOR ENTIRELY – speech that doesn’t support their increasingly dark and deranged agenda. Tucker Carlson is just the latest.
In the greatest imaginable irony, the nation once boasting the most robust culture of freedom of speech and the press – undergirded by the strongest constitutional protections for those rights – is now ground zero for a total war on free expression.
How could this possibly happen in the United States of America? It’s all explained as never before in the sensational new issue of WND’s critically acclaimed WHISTLEBLOWER magazine, titled “THE ELITES’ ALL-OUT WAR ON FREE SPEECH.” WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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