Pro-life advocates from Coalition Life are asking the United States Supreme Court to restore sidewalk counselors’ First Amendment right to speak with abortion-minded women outside abortion facilities.
The lawsuit started in 2023 after the Carbondale City Council approved a 100-foot bubble zone around an entrance to a hospital, medical clinic or healthcare facility.
In May 2023 during a news conference in Carbondale announcing the federal lawsuit, Thomas More Society law firm head litigator Peter Breen said they're watching Carbondale become an abortion hub for the Midwest and southeastern United States.
In March 2024, the Thomas More Society says after Coalition Life sued the city of Carbondale, a federal appeals court cleared the path for Coalition Life to petition the Supreme Court. In dismissing Coalition Life vs. City of Carbondale, the federal appeals court ruled it remains “bound by an earlier court ruling in Hill vs. Colorado.”
Since the Supreme Court decided Hill in 2000, the Supreme Court itself, in its 2022 decision in the Dobbs decision, singled out Hill as the leading example of the court’s abortion precedents having “distorted First Amendment doctrines”—suggesting its readiness to revisit the constitutionality of speech-restricting “bubble zone” laws.
Read the Complaint for Civil Rights Violations, Injunctive Relief and Declaratory Judgement in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois Eastern Division filed on May 16, 2023, by Thomas More Society attorneys, as Coalition for Life, St. Louis, dba Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois, by clicking here.
