Case Name: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James D. SODERNA, et al., Defendants-Appellants
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1996-04-30
Citations: 82 F.3d 1370
Docket Number: Nos. 95-1309, 95-1333, 95-1430, 95-1488 and 95-1494
Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James D. SODERNA, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
Judges: Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and KANNE, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 3d Series
Volume: 82
Pages: 1370–1387

Head Matter:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. James D. SODERNA, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
Nos. 95-1309, 95-1333, 95-1430, 95-1488 and 95-1494.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.
Argued Feb. 23, 1996.
Decided April 30, 1996.
Matthew L. Jacobs, Office of the U.S. Attorney, Milwaukee, WI, Jessica Dunsay Silver, Eileen Penner (argued), Dept, of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Appellate Section, Washington, DC, for U.S. in Nos. 95-1309 and 95-1494.
Eugene R. Pigatti, Fiorenza & Hayes (argued), Milwaukee, WI, for James D. Soder-na, Colin L. Hudson, Michael Charles Suhy, Dale R. Pultz.
Colleen K. Connell, James A. Huttenhower, Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU, Inc., Chicago, IL, for American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, American Civil Liber-tiés Union Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.
Deborah A Ellis, New York City, Priscilla Smith, Center for Reproductive Law & Policy, New York City, for American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Feminist Majority Foundation, Nat. Abortion Federation, Nat. Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, Nat. Center for the Pro Choice Majority, Nat. Organization for Women, Inc., Nat. Women’s Law Center, Wisconsin Women’s Network, Women’s Law Project, Women’s Legal Defense Fund.
Matthew L. Jacobs, Office of the U.S. Attorney, Milwaukee, WI, Jessica Dunsay Silver, Eileen Penner (argued), Dept, of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Appellate Section, Washington, DC, Kevin A Forder, U.S. Dept, of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Criminal Section, Washington, DC, for U.S. in Nos. 95-1333, 95-1430 and 95-1488.
Michael Charles Suhy, Canton, MI, pro se.
Rene L. Wright (argued), Soldotna, AK, for Marilyn R. Hatch.
Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
POSNER, Chief Judge.
The defendants appeal from their convictions for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994, 18 U.S.C. § 248, raising a variety of constitutional questions. The Act, which already has survived similar constitutional challenges in three other circuits, United States v. Dinwiddie, 76 F.3d 913 (8th Cir.1996); Cheffer v. Reno, 55 F.3d 1517 (11th Cir.1995); American Life League, Inc. v. Reno, 47 F.3d 642 (4th Cir.1995), was passed in the wake of continuing violence against, and other forcible interference with, abortion clinics, their staffs, and their clientele by radical elements of the anti-abortion movement. Murder, arson, kidnappings, bombings and bomb threats, assaults, death threats, trespasses, vandalism, gas attacks, military-style assaults, and blockades of entrances to clinics — a concerted nationwide wave of violence, intimidation, and obstruction that had overwhelmed the local authorities in some areas and that local authorities in other areas were unwilling to take action against — impelled the passage of the Act with strong bipartisan support. See, e.g., S.Rep. No. 117, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993). Although as its title implies the Act is concerned primarily with the protection of abortion clinics, the drafters cast the net of liability wider. The Act for bids the use of force or threats of force or physical obstruction deliberately to injure, intimidate, or interfere with people seeking to obtain or to provide any reproductive medical or other health services, not just abortion, and also people seeking to exercise, their religious rights in a church or other house of worship. 18 U.S.C. § 248(a). Substantial criminal as well as civil penalties are authorized for violations of the Act; but where the violation "involv[es] exclusively a nonviolent physical obstruction, the fine shall be not more than $10,000 and the length of imprisonment shall be not more than six months, or both, for the first offense." § 248(b). The statutory term "physical obstruction" is defined as "rendering impassable ingress to or egress from a facility that provides reproductive health services or to or from a place of religious worship, or rendering passage to or from such a facility or place of religious worship unreasonably difficult or hazardous." § 248(e)(4).
Early one morning in 1994, the six defendants in our ease (one of whom has abandoned his appeal) blockaded the two entrances to an abortion clinic in Milwaukee. Four of the defendants blocked one entrance with a combination of a disabled automobile, a large drum filled with concrete and steel, and their bodies. The automobile was placed on the sidewalk directly in front of the recessed alcove of the entrance; the drum, two of the defendants, and a child occupied the alcove itself. Two other defendants sat on the ground with their bodies extending upright into the ear through holes cut in the car's floor, their bodies being attached to the car by handcuffs, welding, and other means. The doors of the ear had been welded shut and the car was leaking gasoline. The remaining two defendants were similarly fastened to a station wagon that was blocking the other entrance to the clinic. It took the fire department several hours to take the ears apart, extricate the defendants from the cars without injuring the defendants, and clear the entrances. The defendants offered no resistance; there was no violence; there were no threats of violence, or even displays of anger, on the part of the defendants or their supporters, who were picketing in the vicinity. (All these things are apparent from the videotapes of the incident, which are a part of the record.) But dining much of the period in which the fire department wás working to clear the entrances, the members of the clime's staff could not enter the clinic and patients with appointments to have abortions or other procedures or consultations could not be served.
The defendants, all of whom had been arrested for similar conduct in other states, were convicted after a bench trial (their demand for trial by jury having been refused) of physical obstruction of the staff and clientele of the clinic. As first offenders under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act convicted only of nonviolent obstruction, the defendants received prison sentences ranging from 30 days to 6 months and fines ranging from $500 to $3,500.
The defendants argue that the Act exceeds the Constitution's grant of authority to Congress to regulate interstate commerce. We rejected the argument in United States v. Wilson, 73 F.3d 675 (7th Cir.1995). A number of abortion clinics draw both staff and patients from across state lines (the clinic doctor in this case lives in Illinois, though the clime is in Wisconsin) and purchase many of their medical and other supplies in interstate commerce, S.Rep. No. 117, supra, at 31; and the anti-abortion movement, through tactics such as those prohibited by the Act, has succeeded in curtailing the number and activities of abortion climes. So this is a statute that really does seek to remove a significant obstruction, in rather a literal sense, to the free movement of persons and goods across state lines. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 85 S.Ct. 348, 13 L.Ed.2d 258 (1964); Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 377, 13 L.Ed.2d 290 (1964). The boycott of a single ophthalmological surgeon was held in Summit Health, Ltd. v. Pinhas, 500 U.S. 322, 329-30, 111 S.Ct. 1842, 1846-47, 114 L.Ed.2d 366 (1991), to be within the power of Congress to prevent because of the potential impact on the market for ophthalmological services in Los Angeles. The Court emphasized that the test was not the effect of the particular conduct alleged, but that effect cumulated over all the conduct subject to the statute. Id. at 331-32, 111 S.Ct. at 1847-48; see also Hammes v. AAMCO Transmissions, Inc., 33 F.3d 774, 781 (7th Cir.1994). The market in reproductive health services is as large nationwide as the Los Angeles market in ophthal-mological services; is as much or more an interstate market because of interstate movement of patients, staff, and supplies; and is as likely to be disrupted by the kind of activity in which the defendants in this case engaged as the Los Angeles market in ophthalmological services was likely to be disrupted by the antitrust violations with which the defendant hospital chain was charged.
The fact that the motive for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was not to increase the gross national product by removing a barrier to free trade, but rather to protect personal safety and property rights, is irrelevant. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, supra, 379 U.S. at 256-57, 85 S.Ct. at 356-58.. Congress can regulate interstate commerce for any lawful motive. See, e.g., Champion v. Ames, 188 U.S. 321, 356-63, 23 S.Ct. 321, 327-30, 47 L.Ed. 492 (1903) (interstate transportation of lottery tickets); Pic-A-State Pa., Inc. v. Reno, 76 F.3d 1294, 1300-03 (3d Cir.1996) (same); Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308, 33 S.Ct. 281, 57 L.Ed. 523 (1913) (interstate transportation of prostitutes); Brooks v. United States, 267 U.S. 432, 45 S.Ct. 345, 69 L.Ed. 699 (1925) (interstate transportation of stolen cars).
But the defendants also argue that the Act violates the First Amendment. They point out that they blockaded the clinic in order to express their opposition (the sincerity of which is not in question) to abortion, that they did not injure or threaten to injure anybody, and that the First Amendment protects nonverbal as well as verbal expressive activity — protects, for example, the burning of the American flag. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989); United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310, 110 S.Ct. 2404, 110 L.Ed.2d 287 (1990). They do not question the right of government to prevent physical obstruction of access to buildings as well as to prevent violence. They argue rather that the singling out of abortion clinics for protection against violence and obstruction, and the fact that the Act punishes interference, intimidation, obstruction, and so forth only when it is done " because that person [the person interfered with, intimidated, etc.] is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing" an abortion or some other service relating to pregnancy or the reproductive system, 18 U.S.C; § 248(a)(1) (emphasis added), show that the Act's real aim and likely effect are to deter the expression of a particular point of view, namely opposition to abortion. The fact that the protected class was broadened during the passage of the bill through Congress to include all medical and health services related to reproduction (not just abortion), plus places of worship, is, in the defendants' view, a transparent and ignoble figleaf. The statute is, they claim, "obviously" aimed at the antiabortion movement.
It is not at all clear that the statute is "aimed" at the anti-abortion movement. We should not lightly .impugn the motives of legislators. Some staunch opponents of abortion, such as Senator Danforth, were eloquent in support of the bill. See 139 Cong. Rec. S15680 (daily ed. Nov. 16, 1993). It is possible to oppose abortion yet also oppose (and consider counterproductive) not only the murder of abortion doctors but also the blockading of entrances to abortion clinics by tactics described by Judge Coffey, dissenting in the factually identical case of United States v. Wilson, supra, as "distasteful or worse." 73 F.3d at 689. With matters of taste we have nothing to do. If taste were a criterion of protected speech, public debate in the United States would be stilled. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act is not about bad taste in the marketplace of ideas and opinions. It is about, in Judge Coffey's words, what is "worse" than merely "distasteful"; it is about conduct that, rather than being purely symbolic, like flag-burning, Texas v. Johnson, supra, or wearing a black armband, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S.Ct. 733, 21 L.Ed.2d 731 (1969), has, like political assassination, cf. Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 828 n. 18 (2d ed.1988), physical consequences that are independent of symbolic significance.
"[S]ome forms of expression," we wrote in a case involving "cross burning used to intimidate," "are harmful and damaging to others and, as such, do not enjoy the protecting cover of speech in the constitutional sense." United States v. Hayward, 6 F.3d 1241, 1250 (7th Cir.1993). The behavior of the defendants in the present case dramatized their opposition to abortion; it was expressive. But it also made it physically impossible (or at least unreasonably difficult) for staff and patients to enter the clinic. To persuade and to blockade are importantly different forms of action, though both are expressive. One operates just on the mind, the other on the body as well. Burning a flag that one has bought and paid for does not prevent anybody from doing anything; it does not interfere with anyone's personal liberty or property rights. Blockading the entrance to a building not your own does both, just as killing a political opponent invades a right of personal liberty at the same time that it makes a political statement, as in the case of John Wilkes Booth's killing of Abraham Lincoln. The distinction is engraved in the case law interpreting the First Amendment. "[A] physical assault is not by any stretch of the imagination expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment_ '[Violence or other types of potentially expressive activities that produce special harms distinct from their communicative impact . are entitled to no constitutional protection.'" Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476, 484-85, 113 S.Ct. 2194, 2199, 124 L.Ed.2d 436 (1993), quoting Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 628, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 3255, 82 L.Ed.2d 462 (1984).
The First Amendment forbids the states to outlaw peaceful nontrespassory picketing, which like flag-burning does not deprive the people whom the picketers are quarreling with, or trying to influence, of their personal liberty or property rights. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 98-101, 60 S.Ct. 736, 742-14, 84 L.Ed. 1093 (1940). But the amendment does not extend its protection to the next step, where the picketer physically impedes entry to the picketed premises. E.g., Cameron v. Johnson, 390 U.S. 611, 616-17, 88 S.Ct. 1335, 1338-39, 20 L.Ed.2d 182 (1968); Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S.- 536, 553-55, 85 S.Ct. 453, 463-65, 13 L.Ed.2d 471 (1965). "A group of demonstrators could not insist upon the right to cordon off a street, or entrance to a public or private building, and allow no one to pass who did not agree to listen to their exhortations." Id. at 555, 85 S.Ct. at 465. "The power and the duty of the State to take adequate steps to preserve the peace and to protect the privacy, the lives, and the property of its residents cannot be doubted." Thornhill v. Alabama, supra, 310 U.S. at 105, 60 S.Ct. at 745-46 (emphasis added). "We thus need not tolerate coercive or obstructionist conduct solely because it serves some passionate ideology or interest." Pro-Choice Network v. Schenck, 67 F.3d 377, 395 (2d Cir.1995) (en banc) (concurring opinion joined by majority of the judges), cert. granted, — U.S. -, 116 S.Ct. 1260, 134 L.Ed.2d 209 (1996). When "specific individuals are targeted at locations difficult or inconvenient for them to avoid, the First Amendment's tolerance of plausibly coercive or obstructionist protest is least." Id. at 398. Here the defendants went beyond protest and invaded property rights.
The difference between communication and obstruction was well expressed by one of the defendants in this case when he told the judge, 'What we did, we weren't there to protest abortion. If I wanted to protest abortion, I would write my Senator or my Congressman. We were there to save innocent human life." The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act does not close the channels of protest to the right to life movement.
If the government distinguishes arbitrarily among classes of expressive conduct, it may be found (we do not say "will," because we do not have to decide the issue) to be interfering impermissibly with the marketplace in ideas and opinions. If, for example, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act made it a felony to assault the employee of an abortion clinic but only a misdemeanor to assault the employee of a pregnancy clinic that urges its clientele to carry the fetus to term and put up the baby for adoption rather than to have an abortion, it could be argued that the Act violated the First Amendment. Whether the argument would succeed is uncertain in light of cases such as Wisconsin v. Mitchell, supra, 508 U.S. at 485-89, 113 S.Ct. at 2200-01; United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968), and R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992). In the last of these cases, the Court said that "where the government does not target conduct on the basis of its expressive content, acts are not shielded from regulation merely because they express a discriminatory [or otherwise disfavored] idea or philosophy." Id. at 390, 112 S.Ct. at 2546-47. The "ordinance struck down in R.A.V. was explicitly directed at expression [namely hate speech] . [whereas] the statute in this case is aimed, at conduct unprotected by the First Amendment." Wisconsin v. Mitchell, supra, 508 U.S. at 487-89, 113 S.Ct. at 2201. Those words could have been spoken of the present case.
If, in our hypothetical case of differential punishment for assaults against employees of abortion climes versus, climes that promote adoption as an alternative to abortion, the basis for the difference was that there was more violence against employees of abortion clinics than against employees of pregnancy clinics, the difference might be lawful. But this we need not decide. For by broadening, out of an abundance of caution, the protected activity from abortion to reproductive health services, the drafters finessed this particular type of challenge. It is true that the Act is being enforced mainly against opponents of abortion. But this is because it is mainly they who are interfering with the provision of pregnancy-related services, just as it was Vietnam War protesters who burned their draft cards. United States v. O'Brien, supra. Selective prosecution on invidious grounds, see, e.g., Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598, 105 S.Ct. 1524, 84 L.Ed.2d 547 (1985); United States v. Kerley, 787 F.2d 1147 (7th Cir.1986), is not alleged. A group cannot obtain constitutional immunity from prosecution by violating a statute more frequently than any other group. Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc., — U.S.-,-, 114 S.Ct. 2516, 2523-24, 129 L.Ed.2d 593 (1994).
By the same token, the authority of government to criminalize dangerous or destructive conduct is not diminished by the fact that most or even all of the people who engage in the particular conduct sought to be criminalized do so for political reasons. Id. at-, 114 S.Ct. at 2523. Suppose that the only people in the United States who bombed laboratories in which animal research is conducted were members of the Anti-Vivisection League, which had decided that bombing these laboratories is the only effective way of spreading its message. Would the fact that violence was the only effective means of conveying the League's message preclude Congress from passing a law against the bombing of laboratories by persons seeking to impede research on animals? We think not, even though the law would interfere with the marketplace in ideas and opinions by diminishing, even extinguishing (on our hypothetical assumptions), the League's voice.
The vast majority of the millions of Americans who oppose abortion and would like to see restored the state laws struck down, in Roe v. Wade and the cases following it do not utilize violence or blockades or other illegal tactics disrespectful of personal liberty and property rights to disseminate their message. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act will therefore not have the silencing effect on the anti-abortion movement that our hypothetical bombing law would have on the hypothetical Anti-Vivisection League, a silencing effect that nonetheless would not, as we have said, invalidate such a law. Indeed, since many adherents of the right to life movement believe that the movement is harmed rather than helped by violent or confrontational tactics, the Act may assist rather than impede the movement's efforts to persuade those open to persuasion on the issue.
Unless — to come to the second half of the defendants' First Amendment challenge — the Act is so vague that it will deter entirely peaceable protest against abortion. The defendants focus on the statutory definition of "physical obstruction" as including "rendering passage to or from [an abortion clinic or other facility] unreasonably difficult or hazardous." They express concern that someone who was occupying merely a part of the sidewalk leading to an abortion clinic, or even someone trying to hand an antiabortion leaflet to people going to and coming from the clinic, might be thought to be making passage "unreasonably difficult." But when pressed at argument for suggestions as to how to make the statute clearer, the defendants' counsel could come up with nothing better than (1) eliminating the criminal remedies, (2) limiting the statute to obstructions "in front of clinic entrances," or (3) forbidding obstruction "within 100 yards" of the entrance. The first suggestion assumes, what we do not believe, that the statute cannot be made precise enough to permit the imposition of criminal punishments for its violation. The second suggestion is as vague as the current statute. The third is underin-elusive, since depending on the design and location of a clinic a total blockade might be possible at a distance greater than 100 yards.
There are limits to the precision of language. Confined to forbidding the complete blockage of clinic entrances (and thus dispensing with the "unreasonably difficult" language, the source of the alleged vagueness), the Act would be easily evaded, for example by blockaders' leaving just enough space between two of them for a person to squeeze through, touching the blockaders on either side (thus committing a technical battery upon them, though probably a privileged one); or by lying down across the entrance so that the entrant has to step — or jump?— over the blockader. And what of cases in which only one entrance of several (but that the main one) is blocked, or in which all entrances are blocked but persons could easily enter through windows on the ground floor, or in which the roof is strong enough to land a helicopter on? It is difficult to imagine a form of words more perspicuous than "unreasonably difficult" to encompass these and the myriad of other possibilities that come to mind. If as we believe the government is allowed to prohibit the obstruction of access to abortion clinics, it must be allowed to define "obstruction" with sufficient breadth to make the prohibition effective, even if the unavoidable fuzziness of the definition creates a theoretical possibility of deterring lawful expressive activity. The Supreme Court has less doubt than we that "unreasonably obstruct" is clear enough to pass constitutional muster, having remarked in Cameron v. Johnson, supra, 390 U.S. at 616, 88 S.Ct. at 1338, that the word "unreasonably" "is a widely used and well understood word and clearly so when juxtaposed with 'obstruct' and 'interfere.' "
The last and most substantial issue raised by the defendants concerns the right of trial by jury, secured by both Article III section 2 of the original Constitution and the Sixth Amendment, in all federal criminal prosecutions. We state the issue as one of constitutional law rather than of statutory interpretation because we have been pointed to nothing in the text or history of the Freedom of.Access to Clinic Entrances Act that suggests that the drafters intended defendants to have a right to a jury trial and because the defendants do not argue that the right can be derived by statutory as distinct from constitutional interpretation.
Despite the uncompromising language of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has held, consistent with eighteenth century practice, that the constitutional right to a jury trial in federal criminal cases does not cover prosecutions for petty offenses. E.g., Callan v. Wilson, 127 U.S. 540, 552-53, 8 S.Ct. 1301, 1304-06, 32 L.Ed. 223 (1888); Muniz v. Hoffman, 422 U.S. 454, 475-76, 95 S.Ct. 2178, 2190, 45 L.Ed.2d 319 (1975). Besides the historical argument for this exception, the social interest in effective law enforcement has been deemed to outweigh the citizen's interest in interposing a jury of lay persons between the state and himself when the penalty that he faces is mild. The burden of providing jury trials for all petty offenses has been thought disproportionate to the citizen's need for the additional protection against the power of the state that a jury would give him. Blanton v. City of North Las Vegas, 489 U.S. 538, 543, 109 S.Ct. 1289, 1293, 103 L.Ed.2d 550 (1989).
As an original matter we might question whether an offense punishable by up to six months in prison plus a $10,000 fine is properly described as "petty," at least in the absence of historical evidence, not cited to us, that comparable punishments were routinely administered in the eighteenth century without a jury. But we do not write on a clean slate. The Supreme Court, troubled by the difficulty of reasoning one's .way by the methods used by courts to the line between petty and serious, has made clear in a brace of recent unanimous opinions that where the maximum prison term is six months there is almost never going to be a constitutional right to trial by jury even if fines or other supplementary sanctions increase the net severity of punishment well beyond that of the prison term standing by itself. Blanton v. City of North Las Vegas, supra, involved a state statute that punished driving under the influence of alcohol. The statute authorized a maximum punishment for first offenders of six months' imprisonment plus a fine of $1,000 plus loss of driving privileges for 90 days plus mandatory attendance at an alcohol abuse center at the defendant's expense. The Court held that this statute created a petty offense within the meaning of the Constitution. The Court said that "primary emphasis . must be placed on the maximum period of incarceration. Penalties such as probation or a fine . cannot approximate in severity the loss of liberty that a prison term entails. Indeed, because incarceration is an 'intrinsically different' form of punishment, . it is the most powerful indicator whether an offense is 'serious.'" Id. at 542, 109 S.Ct. at 1292-93 (citation omitted). A statute that imposes a maximum sentence of imprisonment of six months is presumed to create a petty offense, and additional statutory penalties will carry the statute over the line only if, in combination with the maximum prison term, they "are so severe, that they clearly reflect a legislative determination that the offense in question is a 'serious' one." Id. at 543, 109 S.Ct. at 1293.
If careful attention is paid to the word "clearly" in the last passage that we quoted, it is apparent that even though the maximum fine is higher in the present case than it was in Blanton it is not so much higher as to make clear that Congress considered a first-time blockade of an abortion clinic a serious offense. When inflation since Blanton was decided (modest though it has been) is taken into account along with the absence of any counterpart here to the suspension of a driver's license, it is unclear whether the maximum criminal penalties for the relevant offense in this ease (nonviolent obstruction by a first offender) are significantly more severe than those in Blanton.
The Supreme Court's next and latest expression of views on the meaning of "petty offense" for purposes of the constitutional right to trial by jury in criminal cases came in United States v. Nachtigal, 507 U.S. 1, 113 S.Ct. 1072, 122 L.Ed.2d 374 (1993) (per curiam). A federal regulation punished driving in a national park under the influence of alcohol with a maximum term of imprisonment of six months and a maximum fine of $5,000, five times the maximum fine in Blanton. Nevertheless the Supreme Court said that the case was "quite obviously controlled" by Blanton. 507 U.S. at 2-4, 113 S.Ct. at 1073. The Court attached no significance to the higher fine, merely remarking that "this monetary penalty 'cannot approximate in severity the loss of liberty that a prison term entails.' " Id. at 4, 113 S.Ct. at 1074 (quoting Blanton, 489 U.S. at 542, 109 S.Ct. at 1292-93). It is noteworthy that the regulation authorized, as an alternative to imprisonment, a term of probation of five years. This was probation with a bite, or rather a mouthful of bites. The judge was authorized to impose 21 conditions on a convicted defendant sentenced to probation, including requiring him to live in a community correctional facility for the entire term. All this is set forth in the Court's opinion, 507 U.S. at 4, 113 S.Ct. at 1074 and n. *, but did not move the Court to reclassify the offense from petty to serious. Yet being required to live in a correctional facility for five years plus having to pay a fine of $5,000 — a combination of sanctions expressly authorized by the regulation upheld in Nachtigal — is a more severe punishment than imprisonment for six months plus a fine of $10,000. So confident was the Court that the punishment authorized by the statute involved in Nachtigal did not cross the line from petty to serious that it reversed the court of appeals unanimously on the certiorari papers, without calling for briefs or hearing oral argument.
The defendants point out that Congress has defined the term "petty offense," as used in Title 18 of the United States Code, to mean, so far as might hear on this case, an offense for which the maximum fine, in the case of an individual defendant, does not exceed $5,000. 18 U.S.C. § 19; see id., § 3571(b)(6). The Supreme Court held in Muniz v. Hoffman, supra, 422 U.S. at 477, 95 S.Ct. at 2190-91, however, that the statutory definition does not determine whether an offense is petty in the constitutional sense. The fine in that case, held not to entitle the defendant to a jury trial, exceeded the then maximum fine for a Title 18 "petty offense" by a factor of twenty — $10,000, as here, but worth a lot more twenty years ago, versus $500. What is more, 18 U.S.C. § 19 allows a petty offender to be fined $10,000 if the offender is an organization rather than an individual. 18 U.S.C. § 19; see id., § 3571(c)(6). It is hard to believe that the difference in resources between individuals and organizations has constitutional significance, when we reflect that many individuals have more money than many organizations.
We do not want to be understood as holding that criminal punishments other than formal incarceration can never move an offense from the petty to the serious category. If the fine for a first-time nonviolent obstruction of a clinic or other facility covered by the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act were $1 million, it would be hard to resist the inference that the offense was serious rather than petty. We need not decide in this case where between $5,000 and $1 million the line should be drawn. It is enough that, in light of the reasoning of Blanton and Nachtigal, it cannot be drawn at $10,000. If we have misunderstood those decisions, the Supreme Court knows how to straighten us out.
The defendants remind us that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act creates civil as well as criminal remedies. 18 U.S.C. § 248(c). The civil remedies are not, however, a part of the criminal punishment. They are imposed in proceedings separate from any criminal proceedings brought against the defendant and they are available whether or not the defendant is prosecuted for a criminal violation. They might as well be in a different statute. And insofar as damages or other traditionally "legal" (as distinct from equitable) remedies are sought in a proceeding under the Act, the defendants are entitled by the Seventh Amendment to trial by jury. A misdemeanor prosecution for a traffic offense, which no one would suppose entitled the defendant to a jury, might be the prelude to a wrongful-death suit against him seeking millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages. Yet the prospect of such a sequel would not entitle him to a jury in his traffic ease.
The other grounds of appeal — that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that defendant Hatch was not in fact blocking an entrance (a videotape shows she was) — are plainly without merit.
We can summarize briefly. The defendants violated a statute that is within the grant of legislative power to Congress in the commerce clause in Article I of the Constitution. And because it regulates with adequate clarity and precision injurious conduct that is not purely symbolic, the statute does not infringe the First Amendment. The defendants were not entitled to have a jury consider the charges against them, because their offense was "petty" in the sense that the Supreme Court has given the word and was therefore beyond the scope of the constitutional guaranty of trial by jury for federal crimes. Whether the statute was a necessary or a wise exertion of the federal police power, whether it will harm or help the opponents of abortion, and whether Congress should have entitled all persons prosecuted under it to trial by jury are not issues that have been confided to the judiciary for resolution. And, needless to say, we are not authorized to reconsider the right of abortion that is the target of these defendants.
AFFIRMED.