High court rules against Calif. crisis pregnancy centre law

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his majority opinion, said the centres “are likely to succeed” in their constitutional challenge to the portion of the law involving licensed centres. That means that while the law is currently on the books, its challengers can go back to court to get an order halting its enforcement. An attorney for the challengers said Tuesday that they expect to be able to do that quickly. California had not been enforcing the law, however.

“California cannot co-opt the licensed facilities to deliver its message for it,” Thomas wrote for himself, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. He called the requirement for unlicensed centres “unjustified and unduly burdensome.”

Justice Stephen Breyer said among the reasons the law should be upheld is that the high court has previously upheld state laws requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions about adoption services. “After all, the law must be evenhanded,” Breyer said in a dissenting opinion joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and anti-abortion groups were among those cheering the decision. The Trump administration had argued that California’s law violates the rights of licensed centres but had no objection to the requirement for the unlicensed centres. “Speakers should not be forced by their government to promote a message with which they disagree, and pro-life pregnancy centres in California should not be forced to advertise abortion and undermine the very reason they exist,” Sessions said in a statement Tuesday.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, called the decision “unfortunate” but said “our work to ensure that Californians receive accurate information about their healthcare options will continue.”

The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice California was a prime sponsor of the California law. NARAL contends that the centres mislead women about their options and try to pressure them to forgo abortion. Estimates of the number of crisis pregnancy centres in the U.S. run from 2,500 to more than 4,000, compared with fewer than 1,500 abortion providers, women’s rights groups said in a Supreme Court filing.

NARAL president Ilyse Hogue said in a statement after Tuesday’s decision that the Supreme Court had “turned its back on women and condoned the deceptive tactics used by fake women’s health centres.”

California’s law was challenged by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, an organization with ties to 1,500 pregnancy centres nationwide and 140 in California. The group was represented at the Supreme Court by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm. NIFLA president Thomas Glessner applauded the court’s decision Tuesday. He called the decision “monumental” and said it was a “great day for pro-life pregnancy centres” and for free speech.

Other cities and states have also passed laws related to crisis pregnancy centres. In 2014, a federal appeals court in New York struck down parts of a New York City ordinance, though it upheld the requirement for unlicensed centres to say that they lack a license.

Other states have laws that regulate doctors’ speech in the abortion context. In Louisiana, Texas and Wisconsin, doctors must display a sonogram and describe the fetus to most pregnant women considering an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Similar laws have been blocked in Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma.

___

Associated Press reporter Kathleen Ronayne contributed to this report from Sacramento, California.

Mark Sherman And Jessica Gresko, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

High court rules against Calif. crisis pregnancy centre law

What's Trending