U.S. Supreme Court Turns Down Pro-Lifers’ Challenge to Buffer Zone Laws

The U.S. Supreme Court has lost the chance to reinforce pro-lifers’ First Amendment rights in connection to abortion clinic buffer zones. 

On February 24th, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois. 

This case goes back to January 2023, when the city of Carbondale, Illinois, enacted a law creating 100-foot “bubble zones” around all entrances to city healthcare facilities, including abortuaries. The law prohibited anyone in one of these buffer zones from speaking to another person “for the purpose of . . .  engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling.” The law was specifically enacted to prevent pro-lifers from counseling and assisting vulnerable women outside of abortion clinics. However, since it applied to all healthcare facilities in the city, over 150 buffer zones were created where American citizens couldn’t exercise their right to free speech. 

Coalition Life, America’s largest professional sidewalk counseling organization, initially sued the City of Carbondale in May 2023 for violating the First Amendment. However, a federal appeals court dismissed the case in March 2024, citing Hill v. Colorado. But Coalition Life didn’t give up. Instead, it worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, giving America’s highest court the chance to repeal the precedent set by Hill v. Colorado. 

Hill v. Colorado was a particular case that went to the Supreme Court in 2000. Colorado had passed a statute making it illegal for any person within 100 feet of a health care facility’s entrance to “knowingly approach” within 8 feet of another person, without that person’s consent, in order to pass “a leaflet or handbill to, display a sign to, or engage in oral protest, education, or counseling with [that] person....” Sidewalk counselors fought for their free speech rights at the time, resulting in the case ending up at the Supreme Court. In an unfortunate 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court defended the buffer zone legislation, concluding that the buffer zone was “not a regulation of speech. Rather, it is a regulation of the places where some speech may occur.”

At the time, Justice John Paul Stevens also stated the following:

“Although the statute prohibits speakers from approaching unwilling listeners, it does not require a standing speaker to move away from anyone passing by. Nor does it place any restriction on the content of any message that anyone may wish to communicate to anyone else, either inside or outside the regulated areas. It does, however, make it more difficult to give unwanted advice, particularly in the form of a handbill or leaflet, to persons entering or leaving medical facilities.”

This decision cemented Hill v. Colorado as a precedent in defense of buffer zones in the United States. This precedent served as the Supreme Court’s excuse for not taking up Coalition Life’s appeal in February, a decision that disappointed pro-lifers and even angered two of the Supreme Court justices. 

Justice Clarence Thomas, supported by Justice Samual Alito, asserted that the Court should have taken up the case, Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, to reconsider the precedent set by Hill v. Colorado. Justice Thomas criticized the Court’s refusal as an “abdication of judicial duty,” arguing that the Colorado ruling has been “seriously undermined” and that this case could have provided clarity to lower courts in the future. 

When the Supreme Court ruled on Hill v. Colorado in 2000, the topic of “buffer zones” may not have been a hot topic. But 25 years later, we live in a very different world. While most of the Supreme Court justices were content to let this chance slip through their hands, I believe Justice Thomas realizes that today, in a world that is increasingly normalizing censorship, reconsidering existing restrictions on free speech is crucial.

At the end of the day, the city of Carbondale ultimately decided to repeal its buffer zone ordinance, quietly at an “extraordinary, weekend meeting in the City Hall basement,” to avoid further scrutiny. But this case still illuminated the issue of Hill v. Colorado’s continuous presence and power in our legal system. It leaves questions in its wake, including whether we will see more testing of the buffer zone waters in the U.S. and whether we as a nation will head in the same direction as the U.K

The buffer zone legislation that has been introduced and upheld in the U.S. is nowhere near as extreme as in the U.K., but that doesn’t mean we are safe from following in the footsteps of our neighbors across the pond. 

As Right to Life U.K. continues to report on, buffer zone legislation has spread across the country and resulted in the arrests of British pro-lifers. These abuses of justice even got the attention of Vice President J. D. Vance, serving as the focal point for his recent address in Munich. Vance put particular emphasis on the case of Adam Smith-Connor, an army veteran and father of two, who was convicted in November 2024 for praying silently, in a public space across the road from an abortion facility, where a “buffer zone” was enforced. Smith-Connor is currently in the process of appealing his conviction, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom.

This is not a future we want to see in our own country, where the right to free speech is enumerated in the very First Amendment to our Constitution. Vance’s awareness of this issue in the U.K. serves as a comfort to pro-lifers in the United States. We have a leader and ally in the White House, who is prepared to fight for free speech in whatever ways he can.