Coalition Life v. Carbondale

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: February 24, 2025
• Docket: 24-57
• Status: Relating-to

Opinion

THOMAS, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES COALITION LIFE v. CITY OF CARBONDALE, ILLINOIS ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT No. 24–57. Decided February 24, 2025

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. JUSTICE ALITO would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari. JUSTICE THOMAS, dissenting from the denial of certiorari. In Hill v. Colorado, 530 U. S. 703 (2000), this Court up- held a state law restricting peaceful speech within 100 feet of abortion clinics. It was clear at the time that Hill’s rea- soning “contradict[ed] more than a half century of well-es- tablished First Amendment principles.” Id., at 765 (Ken- nedy, J., dissenting); see also id., at 742 (Scalia, J., joined by THOMAS, J., dissenting). A number of us have since de- scribed the decision as an “absurd,” “defunct,” “erroneous,” and “long-discredited” “aberration” from the rest of our First Amendment jurisprudence. See City of Austin v. Reagan Nat. Advertising of Austin, LLC, 596 U. S. 61, 86– 87, 92, 103–104 (2022) (THOMAS, J., joined by GORSUCH and BARRETT, JJ., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omit- ted). We have long stopped applying Hill. See, e.g., City of Austin, 596 U. S., at 76. And, a majority of this Court re- cently acknowledged that Hill “distorted [our] First Amend- ment doctrines.” Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organ- ization, 597 U. S. 215, 287, and n. 65 (2022). Following our repudiation in Dobbs, I do not see what is left of Hill. Yet, lower courts continue to feel bound by it. The Court today declines an invitation to set the record straight on Hill’s de- funct status. I respectfully dissent. I Hill involved a 1993 Colorado statute that established 2 COALITION LIFE v. CARBONDALE

“buffer zones” around abortion clinics. The law made it a crime for any person, within 100 feet of any “health-care facility” entrance, to “knowingly approach” within 8 feet of another person, without that person’s consent, “for the pur- pose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person.” Colo. Rev. Stat. §18–9–122(3) (2024). Put another way, Colorado’s law—still in effect today—pro- hibits unconsented “sidewalk counseling” within 100 feet of abortion clinics. Shortly after the law’s enactment, a group of self-de- scribed sidewalk counselors who sought to peacefully “edu- cate” and “counsel” “passersby about abortion and abortion alternatives” challenged the law under the First Amend- ment. Hill, 530 U. S., at 708, 710 (internal quotation marks omitted). This Court upheld the law as a content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction. Id., at 725. Hill’s errors were numerous. Whether Colorado’s law ap- plies to a given speaker undeniably turns on “what he in- tends to say.” Id., at 742 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original). “A speaker wishing to approach another for the purpose of communicating any message except one of pro- test, education, or counseling may do so without first secur- ing the other’s consent.” Ibid. Nevertheless, the Court deemed the law content neutral on the theory that it does not prohibit a particular viewpoint or a particular subject matter. Id., at 723. But, this Court had never—and since Hill, has never—taken such a narrow view of content-based speech restrictions. Buffer zones like the one at issue in Hill are “obviously and undeniably content based.” Id., at 742 (Scalia, J., dissenting); accord, id., at 767 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). As a result of this error, the Court purported to subject the Colorado law to so-called “intermediate scrutiny,” a standard far more lenient than the “strict scrutiny” we ap- ply to content-based restrictions. And, the Court applied an Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 3

unusually flexible version of intermediate scrutiny. Ordi- narily, any content-neutral burden on protected speech must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant state inter- est, and it must leave open ample alternative means of com- munication. See id., at 749 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The Hill majority first minimized the burden imposed on First Amendment rights by demoting the right to speak in public forums to a mere “interest.” Id., at 714. The Court then declared that Colorado had a substantial interest in pro- tecting its citizens’ “right to avoid unwelcome speech.” Id., at 717. But, as Justice Scalia explained, the State had ex- pressly disclaimed that interest in its briefs before the Court. Id., at 750 (dissenting opinion). And with good rea- son, because “[w]e have consistently held that ‘the Consti- tution does not permit government to decide which types of otherwise protected speech are sufficiently offensive to re- quire protection for the unwilling listener or viewer.’ ” Id., at 751 (quoting Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U. S. 205, 210 (1975); emphasis in original). Nevertheless, that ex- pressly disclaimed state interest became the “linchpin” of the Court’s analysis. Hill, 530 U. S., at 750 (Scalia, J., dis- senting). Justice Scalia could identify only one explanation for the majority’s anomalous decision: “[T]he jurisprudence of this Court has a way of changing when abortion is involved.” Id., at 742. Hill reflects “the ‘ad hoc nullification machine’ ” that this Court “set[s] in motion to push aside whatever doc- trines” happen to “stand in the way” of abortion. Id., at 741. Hill’s abortion exceptionalism turned the First Amend- ment upside down. As Hill’s author once explained, the First Amendment reflects a “ ‘profound national commit- ment’ to the principle that ‘debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.’ ” NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U. S. 886, 913 (1982) (major- ity opinion of Stevens, J.). That principle applies with per- 4 COALITION LIFE v. CARBONDALE

haps its greatest force to speech that society finds “offen- sive” or “disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989). Yet, Hill manipulated this Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence precisely to disfavor “opponents of abortion” and their “right to persuade women contem- plating abortion that what they are doing is wrong.” 530 U. S., at 741–742 (Scalia, J., dissenting). II It is unclear what, if anything, is left of Hill. As lower courts have aptly observed, Hill is “incompatible” with our more recent First Amendment precedents. Price v. Chi- cago, 915 F. 3d 1107, 1117 (CA7 2019) (opinion of Sykes, J., joined by Barrett, J.). Start with McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U. S. 464 (2014). There, this Court unanimously held unconstitutional a Massachusetts law that prohibited anyone from entering a 35-foot buffer zone around an abortion facility. Id., at 471– 472, 497. In doing so, the Court determined that the law was content neutral because—rather than targeting certain kinds of speech such as protest, education, and counsel- ing—the law prohibited virtually any speech within the buffer zone. Id., at 479. The Court made clear, however, that the law “would be content based if it required ‘enforce- ment authorities’ to ‘examine the content of the message’ ” to determine whether the law applied. Ibid. That position is irreconcilable with Hill, which the Court did not even bother to cite. Hill is likewise at odds with Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U. S. 155 (2015). Reed involved a First Amendment chal- lenge to a town’s sign code that regulated various categories of signs based on “the type of information they convey.” Id., at 159. Relying on Hill, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the sign code was content neutral, reasoning that the town “ ‘did not adopt its regulation of speech because it disagreed Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 5

with the message conveyed’ ” and its “ ‘interests in regu- lat[ing] temporary signs are unrelated to the content of the sign.’ ” 576 U. S., at 162. That court then applied a lower level of scrutiny and upheld the code. Ibid. We reversed, holding that a speech regulation is content based—and thus “presumptively unconstitutional”—if it “draws distinctions based on the message a speaker conveys.” Id., at 163. McCullen and Reed “establish that strict scrutiny is the proper standard of review when a law targets a ‘specific subject matter . . . even if it does not discriminate among viewpoints within that subject matter.’ ” Bruni v. Pitts- burgh, 592 U. S. ___ (2021) (THOMAS, J., statement respect- ing denial of certiorari). That proposition presents “glaring tension” with Hill. 592 U. S., at ___; see also Price, 915 F. 3d, at 1118 (“In the wake of McCullen and Reed, it’s not too strong to say that what Hill explicitly rejected is now prevailing law”). Our post-Reed decisions have firmly established Hill’s di- minished status. In City of Austin, for example, the major- ity ran as far as it could from Hill, even though Hill was the one “case that could possibly validate the majority’s aber- rant analysis” on the constitutionality of restrictions on bill- board advertising. 596 U. S., at 86, 102 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). The majority nonetheless insisted that any alleged sim- ilarity was “a straw man,” rejecting the notion that its opin- ion had “ ‘resuscitat[ed]’ ” Hill, and reminding readers that it did “not cite” the decision at all. 596 U. S., at 76. Our latest word on Hill—expressed in a majority opinion joined by five Members of this Court—is that the decision “distorted [our] First Amendment doctrines.” Dobbs, 597 U. S., at 287, and n. 65. If Hill’s foundation was “deeply shaken” before Dobbs, see Price, 915 F. 3d, at 1119, the Dobbs decision razed it. This trajectory calls to mind the story of Lemon v. Kurtz- man, 403 U. S. 602 (1971), which had created a three-part test to determine whether a law violated the Establishment 6 COALITION LIFE v. CARBONDALE

Clause. While this Court had not by any one statement overruled Lemon, for many years it either “expressly de- clined to apply the test” or “simply ignored it.” American Legion v. American Humanist Assn., 588 U. S. 29, 49 (2019) (plurality opinion) (collecting cases). We were never shy about Lemon’s “shortcomings” and “daunting problems.” 588 U. S., at 49, 51. And, we eventually faulted lower courts for failing to notice that the “ ‘shortcomings’ associ- ated with th[e] ‘ambitiou[s],’ abstract, and ahistorical” Lemon test had “bec[o]me so ‘apparent’ that this Court long ago abandoned” it. Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U. S. 507, 534 (2022) (second alteration in original). In other words, we explained, Lemon had long been disman- tled by our precedents, and lower courts should have recog- nized its demise. Given that prior to Kennedy, a decision of the Court had never outright condemned Lemon as a “dis- tort[ion],” Dobbs, 597 U. S., at 287, and n. 65, Hill’s aban- donment is arguably even clearer than Lemon’s. To be sure, this Court has not uttered the phrase “we overrule Hill.” For that reason, some lower courts have felt compelled to uphold Hill-like buffer zones around abortion clinics. See, e.g., Vitagliano v. County of Westchester, 71 F. 4th 130, 141 (CA2 2023). This case is another prime ex- ample of that trend, and “[o]ne can hardly blame [lower courts] for misunderstanding” when “[w]e [have] created . . . confusion.” Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast, Inc., 586 U. S. 1057, 1059 (2018) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). We are responsible for resolving that confusion, and we should have done so here. III Six months after this Court decided Dobbs, the city coun- cil of Carbondale, Illinois, passed Ordinance No. 2023–03, a buffer-zone restriction that copied nearly verbatim the Colorado law at issue in Hill. See Carbondale, Ill., City Code §14–4–2(H) (2023). The city council explicitly invoked Cite as: 604 U. S. ____ (2025) 7

Hill as a justification for enacting the ordinance. See Coa- lition for Life St. Louis v. Carbondale, No. 3:23–cv–1651 (SD Ill.), Doc. 1–1, p. 3. Petitioner Coalition Life is a Missouri nonprofit that or- ganizes sidewalk counselors to counsel, educate, pray, dis- play signs, and distribute literature outside abortion clin- ics. Their goal is to engage in “one-on-one conversation in a calm, intimate manner,” as they find that approach most effective. Complaint in No. 3:23–cv–1651, p. 3, ¶10. The organization prohibits its counselors from engaging in in- timidating or threatening behavior. Until the passage of Ordinance No. 2023–03, Coalition Life counselors engaged in sidewalk counseling outside abortion facilities in Carbondale. But, the new ordinance “severely hinder[ed]” their ability to do so. Id., at 11, ¶48. The newly enacted 100-foot buffer zone meant that Coali- tion Life counselors were forced to stand far away from those with whom they wished to speak. In some cases, side- walk counselors had nowhere to stand but in the middle of busy roads, rendering intimate counseling activities effec- tively impossible. Coalition Life sued the city of Carbondale, alleging, among other things, that the ordinance violates the First Amendment. When Carbondale moved to dismiss the suit under Hill, Coalition Life responded that over the years Hill has been eroded, but it nevertheless conceded that its claims were foreclosed insofar as Hill remains good law. The District Court dismissed the suit on the ground that Hill and binding Seventh Circuit precedent controlled. Co- alition for Life St. Louis v. Carbondale, 2023 WL 4681685, *1 (SD Ill., July 6, 2023). The Seventh Circuit affirmed on the same ground, acknowledging the plaintiffs’ assertion that Carbondale’s buffer zone was “ ‘modeled after and nearly identical’ ” to the one upheld in Hill. 2024 WL 1008591, *1 (Mar. 8, 2024). Because Hill was the exclusive basis for both decisions below, this case clearly and cleanly 8 COALITION LIFE v. CARBONDALE

presents the question of Hill’s viability.* This Court has received a number of invitations to make clear that Hill lacks continuing force. Some of those invita- tions have arisen in cases with thorny preliminary issues or other obstacles to our review. See, e.g., Bruni, 592 U. S. ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.). But, no such obstacles are present here. It is undisputed that Carbondale’s ordinance is iden- tical to Colorado’s law in all material respects. It is likewise undisputed that both the District Court and the Seventh Circuit dismissed Coalition Life’s suit exclusively on the ground that those courts felt bound by Hill. This case would have allowed us to provide needed clarity to lower courts. * * * Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty. “We are responsible for the confusion among the lower courts, and it is our job to fix it.” Gee, 586 U. S., at 1059 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). I would have taken this opportunity to explicitly overrule Hill. For now, we leave lower courts to sort out what, if anything, is left of Hill’s reasoning, all while constitutional rights hang in the balance. I respectfully dissent.

—————— *Carbondale repealed Ordinance 2023–03 in the summer of 2024. See An Ordinance Repealing Ordinance No. 2023–03, Carbondale, Ill., Ordi- nance No. 2024–__ (July 13, 2024). But, this fact is not fatal to peti- tioner’s claims. The ordinance was in effect for over a year and a half, and Coalition Life sought nominal damages for the infringement of First Amendment rights. A plaintiff ’s request for nominal damages can sat- isfy the redressability requirement for Article III standing and keep an otherwise moot case alive. See Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U. S. 279, 293 (2021).