On October 5, several pro-life legal groups — the Thomas More Society, Liberty Counsel, LiMandri & Jonna, Dhillion Law Group, the American Center for Law & Justice, and the Life Legal Defense Foundation — asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its previous ruling or issue a pause on the proceedings in the Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation lawsuits against undercover pro-life journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, along with Troy Newman, Albin Rhomberg, and the Center for Medical Progress. The law firms asked the court to consider modifying its 2022 opinion, which was in favor of Planned Parenthood, awarding the abortion business more than $2 million in damages.
This move comes after the United States Supreme Court decided earlier this month not to review Daleiden’s and Merritt’s appeal of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. Since its decision against the members of the Center for Medical Progress, the Ninth Circuit handed down a very different ruling in a similar undercover journalism case in July 2023.
In a press release, Tom Ciesielka of TC Public Relations explained, “Thomas More Society attorneys believe that a critical ruling made by the same court changes the facts of the situation for which Daleiden was aggressively attacked by the abortion giant and its lobby.”
READ: Supreme Court won’t hear case that targeted pro-life investigators Daleiden and Merritt
That “critical ruling” was a Ninth Circuit decision to strike down Oregon’s undercover recording law as unconstitutional in Project Veritas v. Schmidt. Project Veritas, which carries out undercover journalism, had challenged Oregon’s undercover recording law in federal court. The press release explained that California’s anti-undercover recording law is analogous to that of Oregon. In light of that decision by the appeals court, Thomas More Society and the other legal firms have asked the Ninth Circuit to review its ruling in the case against Daleiden, Merritt, and others.
As previously reported by Live Action News, in October 2022, the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in favor of Planned Parenthood was based heavily on the claim that “[t]he [CMP undercover] videos did not contain evidence of wrongdoing.” However, the videos had been independently authenticated by multiple forensic analyses, including one carried out by a firm hired by Planned Parenthood. The videos show compelling evidence that Planned Parenthood was receiving monetary benefits from the sale of fetal body parts of babies it had aborted. The trafficking of human body parts is a federal crime.
In addition, in January 2019, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that undercover videos made by the Center for Medical Progress provided convincing evidence that Planned Parenthood was involved in the trafficking of fetal body parts from aborted children. For that reason, it ruled that the state of Texas could defund Planned Parenthood.
