Supreme Court strikes down abortion clinic buffer zone

[tomm2thumbs]

24. but Roberts approved the same restriction on the Supreme Court.... hypocrite

TIME TO TAKE THEIR OWN 2013 RESTRICTION TO COURT...

"The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a new regulation barring most demonstrations on the plaza in front of the courthouse. The regulation did not significantly alter the court’s longstanding restrictions on protests on its plaza. It appeared, rather, to be a reaction to a decision issued Tuesday by a federal judge, which narrowed the applicability of a 1949 federal law barring “processions or assemblages” or the display of “a flag, banner or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization or movement” in the Supreme Court building or on its grounds.

The law was challenged by Harold Hodge Jr., a student from Maryland who was arrested in 2011 on the Supreme Court plaza for wearing a large sign protesting police mistreatment of blacks and Hispanics. Lawyers representing the Supreme Court’s marshal told the judge hearing Mr. Hodge’s case that the law was needed to allow “unimpeded ingress and egress of visitors to the court” and to preserve “the appearance of the court as a body not swayed by external influence.” But Judge Beryl A. Howell of Federal District Court in Washington ruled for Mr. Hodge. “The absolute prohibition on expressive activity in the statute is unreasonable, substantially overbroad and irreconcilable with the First Amendment,” she wrote, adding that the law was “unconstitutional and void as applied to the Supreme Court plaza.”

The Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of the law in 1983, in United States v. Grace, saying it could not be applied to demonstrations on the public sidewalks around the court. On the grand plaza in front of the courthouse, however, Supreme Court police have been known to order visitors to remove buttons making political statements. The regulation issued Thursday, which the court said was “approved by the chief justice of the United States,” requires visitors to “maintain suitable order and decorum within the Supreme Court building and grounds.” It bars demonstrations, which it defines as “picketing, speech making, marching, holding vigils or religious services and all other like forms of conduct that involve the communication or expression of views or grievances, engaged in by one or more persons, the conduct of which is reasonably likely to draw a crowd or onlookers.”

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“Facing a fine or imprisonment because one man demonstrates in front of the Supreme Court,” he said, “is repugnant to the First Amendment.”


http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/supreme-court-issues-new-rule-barring-protests-on-plaza/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0