{"id":24314,"date":"2024-12-20T17:25:33","date_gmt":"2024-12-21T00:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/minneapolis-softens-law-on-obstructing-abortion-clinics\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T00:25:33","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T00:25:33","slug":"minneapolis-softens-law-on-obstructing-abortion-clinics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/minneapolis-softens-law-on-obstructing-abortion-clinics\/","title":{"rendered":"Minneapolis softens law on obstructing abortion clinics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A protester demonstrates in front of a Planned Parenthood, July 12, 2022, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. (Abbie Parr\/The Associated Press)<\/span>Abbie Parr<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

MINNEAPOLIS \u2013 Minneapolis has softened an ordinance that prohibited the obstruction of entrances and driveways to abortion clinics after anti-abortion activists sued to challenge it on free-speech grounds.<\/p>\n

The City Council this month quietly amended the ordinance to exclude constitutionally protected activities and agreed to pay the plaintiffs\u2019 legal fees. Brian Gibson, chief executive officer of Pro-Life Action Ministries, said in an interview Friday that it amounted to an admission by the city that the law violated the freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were accepting fault for having violated our constitutional rights,\u201d Gibson said.<\/p>\n

Pro-Life Action Ministries sends \u201csidewalk counselors\u201d to Planned Parenthood clinics in Minneapolis, St. Paul and elsewhere to try to dissuade people from having abortions. The ordinance, which the city enacted in 2022, was designed to protect patients of the Planned Parenthood clinic in the Uptown neighborhood from group members who would approach patients as they drove into the parking lot there. Gibson said they never blocked any entrances, but would try to get people to roll down their windows to take literature or talk.<\/p>\n

Minneapolis was the only city the state with such a rule. Gibson said their most immediate concern when they filed the lawsuit in 2023 was to overturn the Minneapolis ordinance, but he acknowledged that they also wanted to prevent St. Paul, where there\u2019s a much busier Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, from adopting something similar, which it never did.<\/p>\n

The final judgment in favor of Pro-Life Action Ministries and three of its sidewalk counselors was filed in federal court Thursday.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, several people have been convicted in the last year alone under the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act, or similar laws for physically blockading abortion clinic entrances. That includes activists in Detroit, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Mount Juliet, Tennessee, with some getting prison sentences as high as three to five years.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of a long meeting that dealt mostly with other topics on Dec. 5, the Minneapolis City Council went into closed session to approve the agreement on legal fees, then returned in a very brief open session to unanimously exempt \u201cany person or group engaging in conduct protected by the United States Constitution, the Minnesota Constitution or federal or Minnesota law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The law still prohibits physically blocking clinic entrances, and the city council\u2019s vice president, Aisha Chughtai, said it\u2019s consistent with the FACE Act.<\/p>\n

She said the council wants to make sure people have access to heath care, including abortions, and voiced support for Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also want to be sure to provide very specific carveouts to ensure First Amendment rights are protected and ensure our local authority remains intact,\u201d she told her colleagues at the meeting.<\/p>\n

Chughtai did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday. In response to a request for comment from the city attorney\u2019s office, a city spokesperson supplied a statement that was nearly identical to what Chughtai said at the council meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey amended their ordinance and repaired the damage that was done there. It was total victory for the free-speech folks,\u201d said Peter Breen, head of litigation for the conservative Thomas More Society, which represented the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood North Central States, which was not a party to the lawsuit, said in a statement that under the revision, \u201cPatients continue to be protected from people blocking or obstructing the driveway or sidewalk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Breen said they\u2019ll file a bill for the attorney\u2019s fees soon, but that their last estimate was in the $600,000 range.<\/p>\n

The Thomas More Society and allied groups are litigating similar restrictions nationwide, Breen said. They\u2019ve asked a federal appeals court to block a similar ordinance in Clearwater, Florida. They\u2019re also fighting similar measures in Westchester County of New York, San Diego, and Detroit.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ve asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a challenge to an ordinance in Carbondale, Illinois. While the Supreme Court in 2000 affirmed a Colorado buffer zone requirement in a case called Hill v. Colorado, Breen noted that the high court more recently in its Dobbs decision, which struck down the constitutional right to abortion, criticized the Hill decision, saying its previous abortion rulings \u201chave distorted First Amendment doctrines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson said his members sometimes succeed in persuading people who come to the Minnesota clinics to cancel their abortions. He said they gather outside the St. Paul clinic nearly every day, and even go there Sundays when it\u2019s closed just to pray. And he said they had a victory on their first day back outside the Minneapolis clinic when they approached a woman who had parked on the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a baby saved,\u201d he said. \u201cA woman decided not to go through with her abortion appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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