The repealed Carbondale law barred individuals from approaching patients within 8 feet of an abortion facility’s entrance to hand out pamphlets or engage in conversations without consent. City officials justified the measure as a necessary response to an uptick in harassment following Dobbs.
Despite enacting the ordinance, Carbondale never enforced it, later repealing it after determining that existing state laws and local regulations sufficiently protected patients.
Legal Battle Over Free Speech and Abortion Rights
While the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the case leaves Hill intact, the debate over abortion buffer zones remains far from settled. Coalition Life and its supporters argue that such laws create an unconstitutional carve-out in free speech protections, specifically targeting anti-abortion advocates while allowing pro-choice demonstrators more freedom.
In its appeal, Coalition Life echoed Justice Antonin Scalia’s fiery Hill dissent, in which he condemned the ruling as a politically motivated distortion of the First Amendment. The group contends that in the post-Dobbs landscape, where states are fiercely divided on abortion rights, buffer zones serve as a tool for jurisdictions that allow abortion to suppress opposing viewpoints.
