Suit to Block Clinic Blockades Dealt Blow

U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima, shaking the legal foundation of a lawsuit that attacks anti-abortion blockades as a civil rights violation, has ruled that “abortion seekers” do not qualify as a special class of people entitled to protection under a 19th-Century civil rights law.

“Although women, under certain circumstances, still have a constitutional right to seek an abortion, the courts have never designated ‘abortion seekers’ as a class requiring special protection . . . ,” Tashima said.

The judge’s ruling discounted a major thrust of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in an attempt to prevent Operation Rescue from staging blockades at clinics that provide abortions.

It came as something of a surprise because only three weeks ago, Tashima had chastised Operation Rescue leaders for violating an injunction he issued in March prohibiting blockades in seven California cities.

He found them in contempt of court and ordered them to pay $110,000 in attorneys fees to the American Civil Liberties Union and other lawyers to cover costs incurred in bringing the contempt action on behalf of pro-choice groups.

Tashima’s latest ruling left the injunction and those sanctions in place. Additionally, he gave the ACLU 30 days to amend its complaint, but Tashima expressed “grave doubt” about the prospective success of such a move.

Right to Vote

The ruling stems from Tashima’s interpretation of a section of the U.S. code enacted in 1875 in an attempt to prevent the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations from denying blacks equal protection of the laws, including conspiring to prevent them from engaging in the right to vote.

The judge acknowledged in his decision that other federal courts in New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania had permitted class-action suits against abortion opponents, including Operation Rescue, to go forward relying on the statute. Historically, the statute has been used by groups other than blacks to obtain protection from illegal treatment.

However, Tashima said his reading of case law led him to a different conclusion. He cited one 1985 federal court case that said the 1875 statute should be applied “beyond race only when the class in question can show that there has been a governmental determination that its members ‘require and warrant special federal assistance in protecting their civil rights.’ ”

Tashima said Operation Rescue’s activities did not constitute “gender-based discrimination” because not all women are affected by the blockades. The judge said he disagreed with assertions that “any particular subclass of women is a protected class.”

Tashima’s ruling was mailed to lawyers for the two sides on Friday. The decision was hailed Monday by Randall Terry, Operation Rescue’s national director, as well as leaders of the organization in Southern California and their attorneys.

“I believe that judges all over the country are seeing that civil lawsuits that the pro-death community are bringing against us are an abuse of the judicial system,” Terry said in a telephone interview from his home in Binghamton, N.Y.

Trespass Charges

Terry and several others were acquitted on trespass charges last week by a Los Angeles Municipal Court jury, and the organization’s Southern California director said the two court victories “in conjunction . . . will encourage” abortion opponents who might otherwise have balked at blockading clinics.

ACLU attorney Carol Sobel asserted that it was far from clear that the legal conflict is finished, although she clearly was disappointed and surprised by the decision.

“We don’t think the judge has properly characterized the class of people affected by Operation Rescue’s actions,” she said. “It’s not just women seeking abortions,” Sobel added.

In fact, she said, all women seeking services at the clinics where Operation Rescue blockades were conducted were prevented from entering the clinics. Sobel said women seeking normal gynecological services, family planning advice and pre-natal treatment were also blocked from entering the clinics.

She predicted that the judge’s decision would not have a major impact, but she said abortion foes “may think it’s a license to break the law in Los Angeles.”