Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf
Page Number: 32.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

27 

Opinion of BREYER, J. 

“members of the current Active Staff of the Hospital” have
recommended.  Id.,  at  1211.  Doe  2  testified  that  Minden 
Hospital  was  “a  smaller  hospital,”  “very  close  to  the  [geo-
graphic]  limits,”  where  he  “[did]n’t  really  know  anyone.” 
Id., at 454.  He applied to those hospitals where he believed 
he had the highest likelihood of success.  Ibid.   Given this 
evidence, the Fifth Circuit was wrong to conclude that the 
District  Court’s  findings  in  respect  to  Doe  2 were  “clearly
erroneous.”  See Anderson, 470 U. S., at 575. 

Doe 5 

The District Court found that Doe 5 was unable to obtain 
admitting privileges at three hospitals in range of his Baton
Rouge clinic in spite of his good-faith efforts to satisfy each
hospital’s  requirement  that  he  find  a  covering  physician.
250 F. Supp. 3d, at 76; see App. 1334–1335 (Women’s Hos-
pital);  Record  2953  (Baton  Rouge  General),  10659–10661
It 
(Lane  Regional).  The  Court  of  Appeals  disagreed. 
thought  that  Doe  5’s  efforts  reflected  a  “lackluster  ap-
proach” because he asked only one doctor to cover him.  905 
F. 3d, at 809. 

The record shows, however, that Doe 5 asked the doctor 
most likely to respond affirmatively: the doctor with whom
Doe 5’s Baton Rouge clinic already had a patient transfer 
agreement.  App. 1135.  Yet Doe 5 testified that even this 
doctor  was  “too  afraid  to  be  my  covering  physician  at  the
hospital” because, while the transfer agreement could ap-
parently  be  “kept  confidential,”  he  feared  that  an  agree-
ment to serve as a covering physician would not remain a 
secret.  Id., at 1135–1136.  And, if the matter became well 
known, the doctor whom Doe 5 asked worried that it could 
make him a target of threats and protests.  Ibid. 

Doe 5 was familiar with the problem.  Anti-abortion pro-
tests  had  previously  forced  him  to  leave  his  position  as  a
staff member of a hospital northeast of Baton Rouge.  Id., 
at 1137–1138, 1330.  And activists had picketed the school