“Hill has been seriously undermined, if not entirely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,” Thomas wrote. “For now, we leave lower courts to navigate the wreckage of this precedent, while constitutional rights hang in the balance.”
Justice Thomas has consistently criticized Hill, previously calling it “long-discredited” and “defunct.” His Monday dissent reiterated that lower courts continue to apply its logic, despite its supposed obsolescence in the wake of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Carbondale’s Legal Maneuvering
Carbondale, a small Illinois city that enacted the challenged buffer zone law in early 2023, had urged the court to dismiss the case as moot after repealing the ordinance in July. Coalition Life, however, argued that the timing of the repeal—just as the case reached the Supreme Court—was a strategic ploy to avoid judicial scrutiny.
“The only way to prevent this manipulative legal maneuvering is for the court to overrule Hill once and for all,” Coalition Life argued. “If jurisdictions can simply pull the plug at the last minute, First Amendment violations will persist unchecked.”
