Clarence Thomas Slams Supreme Court’s ‘Refusal’ To Take Pro-Life Activists’ Free Speech Case

Supreme Court Sidesteps Pro-Life Free Speech Battle, Sparking Conservative Dissent

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear two cases involving pro-life groups who challenged laws banning protests near abortion clinics on Monday, prompting criticism from one of the court’s most conservative justices.

The court dismissed a challenge from the pro-life group Coalition Life against a law in Carbondale, Illinois prohibiting advocacy against abortion within 100 feet of abortion clinics without their permission. Justice Clarence Thomas criticized the law, which rested on Hill v. Colorado, a 2000 decision that upheld a similar law based on a “right to avoid unwelcome speech” in certain circumstances.

“I would have taken this opportunity to explicitly overrule Hill,” Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, wrote in a dissent Monday. “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.”

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito joined Thomas in dissenting, while their conservative and liberal colleagues did not explain their reasoning, as is common when the Supreme Court declines cases.

The Thomas More Society, which represented Coalition Life, said Carbondale’s law “would fail constitutional scrutiny if it came before the Supreme Court” in a press release. Coalition Life did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Court Declined Previous Case

The court also declined a similar challenge from a pro-life protester against an Englewood, New Jersey ordinance, currently in effect, that says “no person” is allowed within eight feet of an abortion clinic entrance aside from clients, workers or passerby. Thomas focused his dissent on the Coalition Life case in Carbondale, Illinois.

Carbondale’s law prohibited “passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling” against abortion “within a radius of 100 feet from any entrance door to a hospital, medical clinic or healthcare facility.”

The city repealed the law in 2024, but it was in effect for over a year, Thomas noted while sympathizing with Coalition Life’s First Amendment complaint.

“The newly enacted 100-foot buffer zone meant that Coalition Life counselors were forced to stand far away from those with whom they wished to speak,” Thomas said. “In some cases, sidewalk counselors had nowhere to stand but in the middle of busy roads, rendering intimate counseling activities effectively impossible.”

Thomas’s Dissent

Thomas, the oldest judge on today’s court, also dissented from the Hill v. Colorado ruling in 2000.

“A number of us have since described the decision as an ‘absurd,’ ‘defunct,’ ‘erroneous,’ and ‘long-discredited’ ‘aberration’ from the rest of our First Amendment jurisprudence,” he wrote in Monday’s dissent.

Thomas argued that the majority-conservative court already weakened the Hill precedent by ruling in 2022 that there is no constitutional right to abortion in the pivotal Dobbs v. Jackson case.

“Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,” Thomas said.

So-called buffer zone laws restricting protests at abortion facilities are also in effect in European countries that do not have an equivalent of America’s First Amendment, leading to prosecution over pro-life activists’ speech.