The issue of the buffer zones around abortion clinics made its way to the Supreme Court, but only two justices would have taken up the case and you can probably guess who they were.
The buffer zone is the area directly outside the abortion clinic that forbids pro-life activists from entering to try and counsel someone about to kill their baby.
Both Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have taken up the case, but they would have needed two more votes.
Here’s more from The Hill:
The Supreme Court turned down an opportunity to overturn its precedent permitting buffer zones around abortion clinics over the objections of two of the court’s leading conservatives.In two orders issued Monday, the court declined to take up challenges to ordinances in Carbondale, Ill., and Englewood, N.J., that ban anti-abortion activists from approaching someone entering an abortion clinic, sometimes dubbed “sidewalk counseling.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both indicated they would’ve taken up the case, but it requires four justices’ votes to do so.
Lower courts upheld both cities’ ordinances under the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Hill v. Colorado, which found a similar Colorado law did not violate the First Amendment.
Anti-abortion groups have since looked to eviscerate the precedent. Their hopes have been bolstered by several conservative justices who recently criticized the decision as an aberration of free speech doctrine — including in the Supreme Court’s opinion overturning constitutional abortion protections.
“Hill has been seriously undermined, if not completely eroded, and our refusal to provide clarity is an abdication of our judicial duty,” Thomas wrote.
Alito, meanwhile, did not author a written dissent.
The court has declined to revisit Hill before, including in a similar case in 2023.
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