A federal judge has dismissed a Denver woman’s attempt to challenge Colorado’s decades-old law that limits protests near abortion clinics, reaffirming the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent supporting such restrictions.
The law, enacted in 1993, prohibits anyone from approaching within eight feet of another person near a healthcare facility to distribute leaflets, display signs, or engage in counseling without consent. It was originally upheld by the Supreme Court in the 2000 Hill v. Colorado decision, which ruled 6-3 that the law regulates where speech can occur, not the viewpoint being expressed.
Wendy Faustin, who regularly engages in “sidewalk counseling” outside clinics, brought the latest challenge, hoping to spark a reversal of that 2000 ruling. Her lawsuit also targeted a similar ordinance in Denver.
Faustin acknowledged her case was unlikely to succeed at the district level due to the binding precedent set by Hill. Her attorneys stated she intended to use the lower court’s ruling as a stepping stone to petition the Supreme Court to reconsider the constitutionality of buffer zones.
U.S. District Court Judge S. Kato Crews issued a brief order on July 29, siding with existing precedent:
“It is not a matter of whether the Court feels bound… the Court is required to ‘follow the case which directly controls.’”
Faustin noted that at least one current justice—Clarence Thomas—has expressed a desire to overturn Hill. In February, the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case from Illinois, but Thomas dissented, calling for Hill to be explicitly overruled.
“I would have taken this opportunity to explicitly overrule Hill,” Thomas wrote.
While the lower court upheld the law for now, Faustin’s case may still reach the Supreme Court as part of a broader conservative push to revisit legal protections for abortion clinics and redefine the limits of protest rights.
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Katie is a senior who has been on staff for three years. Her favorite type of stories to write is reviews and features. Katie’s favorite ice cream flavor is strawberry.
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