According to a press release, pro-life advocates from the sidewalk counseling organization Coalition Life are asking the United States Supreme Court to restore the First Amendment rights of sidewalk counselors, including the “right to offer compassionate support to abortion-minded women outside abortion facilities.”
On July 16, 2024, Thomas More Society attorneys and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari in Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale. They ask the Supreme Court to overturn its 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado in which it ruled 6-3 to uphold a 1993 Colorado statute preventing pro-life sidewalk counselors from being within eight feet of the entrance of an abortion business without consent to protest, educate, counsel, or distribute information. Pro-lifers had filed a lawsuit against that statute; however, the Supreme Court ruled it to be constitutional.
Following the fall of Roe v. Wade, Carbondale, Illinois — which had up to that point been home to zero abortion businesses, saw three open; the home of Southern Illinois University became an abortion destination. In 2023, it passed a “bubble zone” law to restrict speech about abortion on public sidewalks outside “hospitals, medical clinics, and healthcare facilities” including the city’s abortion businesses. The law mirrors the one upheld in Hill v. Colorado.
The press release states:
In March 2024, after the sidewalk counseling organization sued the city of Carbondale, a federal appeals court cleared the path for Coalition Life to petition the Supreme Court to reconsider Hill. In dismissing Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, the federal appeals court ruled that the arguments advanced by Coalition Life were “foreclosed” and the court remains “bound by Hill.”
The appellate court reasoned that the Supreme Court—though it has questioned the case’s viability—“has not expressly overruled it.” Since the Supreme Court decided Hill in 2000, the case has come under fire for being out of step with the First Amendment and a prime example of the “abortion distortion” factor in case law.
The Supreme Court itself, in its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, singled out Hill as the leading example of the court’s abortion precedents having “distorted First Amendment doctrines”—suggesting its readiness to revisit the constitutionality of speech-restricting “bubble zone” laws.
Brian Westbrook, executive director and founder of Coalition Life, said, “The ‘bubble zone’ ordinance has been nothing more than the continued and relentless persecution of our team on the sidewalk. This fight won’t be over until Hill is overturned and thousands of municipalities across the nation, like Carbondale, understand you cannot trample on our rights.”
