Opinion ID: 775766
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Constitutionality of the Injunction

Text: 45 The record establishes that injunctive relief against Melfi is appropriate to protect access to reproductive health facilities in the Western District of New York. We now turn to an examination of the terms of the injunction against her. The First Amendment requires that the challenged provisions of the injunction burden no more speech than necessary to serve a significant government interest. Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, 519 U.S. 357, 372 (1997) (quoting Madsen v. Women's Health Ctr., Inc., 512 U.S. 753, 765 (1994)). 46 Melfi argues that we should apply one of the more stringent tests for content-based injunctions or for prior restraints. This contention is without merit. It is well settled that an injunction of this nature (i.e., directed at protestors outside of abortion clinics but based on their unlawful behavior) is content-neutral. See Schenck, 519 U.S. at 373-74; Madsen, 512 U.S. at 762-64; see also Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 719-20 (2000) (applying same rule to review of a statutory restriction on protest activities at health care clinics). Nor is such an injunction a prior restraint. See Schenck, 519 U.S. at 374 n.6; Madsen, 512 U.S. at 763 n.2; see also Hill, 530 U.S. at 733-34. 47 There is also little question that this type of injunction serves significant governmental interests. 10 See, e.g., Madsen, 512 U.S. at 767-68. The articulated public interests supporting the 2000 Injunction are: (1) ensuring public safety and order; (2) protecting freedom to receive reproductive health services; (3) advancing medical privacy and the well-being of patients seeking care at facilities; and (4) safeguarding private property. 48 These are significant governmental interests, capable of supporting injunctive restrictions on protest behavior. The 1992 Injunction imposed fixed fifteen-foot buffer zones around clinic doorways, driveways, and parking lot entrances. See Schenck, 519 U.S. at 380-81. The injunction was upheld by the set of governmental interests similar to those asserted here: ensuring public safety and order, promoting the free flow of traffic on streets and sidewalks, protecting property rights, and protecting a woman's freedom to seek pregnancy-related services. Id. at 376, 117 S. Ct. 855. Other cases have upheld injunctions regulating protest activities at health clinics in order to serve a similar set of interests. See Madsen, 512 U.S. at 768-73; see also Hill, 530 U.S. at 715 (finding an even narrower set of governmental interests sufficiently significant to justify a statutory no-approach zone within one hundred feet of clinic entrances). 49 Melfi's main constitutional objection to the District Court's injunction is that it is overly expansive, thereby unlawfully limiting her First Amendment rights. The injunction provisions must burden no more speech than necessary to serve the significant interests. Schenck, 519 U.S. at 372 (quoting Madsen, 512 U.S. at 765). Specifically, Melfi challenges three provisions: the expanded buffer zones at Buffalo Gyn Womenservices and Planned Parenthood Rochester; the elimination of the sidewalk-counselor exception; and the ban on the use of sound amplification devices. We review each one in turn.
50 In addition to enjoining Melfi from protesting within fifteen-foot buffer zones at all covered facilities in the Western District, the District Court enjoined her from protesting within extensive buffer zones at two facilities: Planned Parenthood Rochester (PPR) and Buffalo Gyn Womenservices (BGW). She challenges these larger buffer zones. Although we agree that picketing activity at the sites has interfered with clinic access, thus meriting the continuation and modification of buffer zones, the enlargements by the District Court are more extensive than necessary to effectuate the articulated state interests and thus violate the First Amendment.
51 BGW is a medical facility providing reproductive health services, including abortions and a range of counseling services. The facility is one of three businesses located on the western side of Main Street between Greenfield and Fairfield Streets in Buffalo, New York. To BGW's south is a dry-cleaning business on the corner of Greenfield Street whose patrons use a sidewalk parking area when they drop off and pick up clothes. 11 The BGW facility has a twenty-foot wide driveway squeezed between its building and the dry-cleaning establishment. The driveway leads to a parking lot and BGW's rear entrance. About sixty feet separate the BGW driveway from BGW's front entrance on Main Street, and a city bus makes regular stops along this strip of sidewalk. BGW's northern neighbor is a Sunoco gas station, which occupies the corner at the intersection of Fairfield and Main Streets. A lengthy sidewalk surrounds the gas station, and the area is largely dedicated to driveways so that cars can easily enter and exit the business. 52 Aside from discussing blockades in 1992 and 1993, the District Court did not specify the extent of more recent protest activity at BGW except to describe the behavior of particular protestors who have proven disruptive. The District Court did not state whether protest activity had continued with the size or ferocity seen in the early 1990s, but the District Court's findings of fact support the conclusion that protest activity, though still highly emotional and intense, has subsided at least in size and manageability. 53 The District Court constructed a significantly expanded no-protest buffer zone at BGW. The new buffer zone runs along most of the BGW side of Main Street between Greenfield and Fairfield Streets. It begins at a point sixty feet south of the BGW driveway, in front of the dry cleaner, and ends fifty-eight feet north of BGW, in front of the Sunoco gas station. The zone thus includes the entire public sidewalk in front of BGW. The District Court further enjoined protest activities within any gas station driveways that fall outside of the buffer zone. 54 The District Court justified the expansion by a piecemeal analysis of the zones' different parts. The buffer zone in front of the dry-cleaner permits customers to safely park on the sidewalk in order to drop off laundry. The zone in front of BGW permits clear and easy access to the facility, both via its driveway and its pedestrian entrance, and also moves noisy protestors further away from the building. By alleviating congestion along the sidewalk, the zone also makes it easier for bus riders to access the bus stop in front of the clinic. The final stretch of no-protest area permits easy and safe access to the Sunoco gas station. Moreover, the entire buffer zone permits shoppers, school children, and any other pedestrians to use the sidewalk without impediment. By removing the distracting protestors, traffic accidents along Main Street are also less likely. 12 55 Despite the laudatory goals of the expanded injunction, we hold that the larger buffer zone is unconstitutional. The zone imposes a severe burden on First Amendment rights by effectively preventing protestors from picketing and communicating from a normal conversational distance along the public sidewalk on Main Street near BGW. Though some limitations are necessary in light of the abusive behavior at BGW, only the buffer zones immediately around entrances and driveways are narrowly tailored to ensure clinic access and to burden no more speech than is necessary. 56 Although previous cases have set no outer limit on the size of buffer zones, we do note that the dimensions of the buffer zone created by the District Court are larger than those upheld in the past. The Supreme Court has previously reviewed and sustained court-made buffer zones of fifteen feet at these sites, relying on its earlier approval of thirty-six-foot buffer zones at reproductive health clinics. Schenck, 519 U.S. at 380 (fifteen-foot zones); Madsen, 512 U.S. at 757 (thirty-six-foot zones). The BGW zone is nearly double the size of the Madsen zones, extending sixty feet south of BGW's driveway toward Greenfield Street and fifty-eight feet north of the BGW building toward Fairfield Street. The resulting buffer zone stretches over 200 feet, more than doubling the dimensions of the old zones. 13 57 Above all, we strike down the enlargements because they are unnecessary. Our review of the evidence indicates that clinic access at BGW is preserved by application of the old fifteen-foot buffer zones. Almost all evidence pointing to the inadequacy of the 1992 Injunction involved one of two situations. First, a group of defendants who are named for the first time in this action, flouted the rules of the 1992 Injunction because the injunction did not name them. Advancing a questionable legal theory, they maintained that because it did not name them, its terms did not bind them. 14 Alternatively, protestors invoked the sidewalk-counselor exception to engage in disruptive behavior within fifteen feet of clinic entrances and driveways. Aside from these abuses, the old buffer zones were sufficient. Moreover, activity in the driveways of these clinics caused the most serious traffic hazards. The 2000 Injunction will eliminate both of these abuses even absent the buffer zone enlargements. It names the protestors regularly involved in disruptive protests in the Western District. Further protecting clinic access, it eliminates the sidewalk-counselor exception and, with it, the porousness that plagued the old buffer zones. 15 58 In addition to being unnecessary, the larger buffer zones have significantly curtailed the exercise of First Amendment rights in the public areas around BGW. The zones effectively remove the protestors from anywhere near BGW and force them either down the block or across Main Street-a road with four lanes of active traffic. The District Court found that the protestors still yell and scream and can be clearly heard outside the clinic and therefore are able to communicate their message effectively. Although relevant, that conclusion understates the injunction's effect on free speech. The new zones sharply curtail the possibility of communication between pedestrians and protestors on this large swath of public sidewalk along Main Street. 59 Such a broad prohibition on free speech at BGW's old location was previously rejected by the Supreme Court in Schenck. 16 The 1992 Injunction included floating buffer zones which required that protestors stand fifteen feet from people or cars seeking access to clinics, but which otherwise allowed protestors to stand near health clinics. See Schenck, 519 U.S. at 367. The provision, though more lenient than the outright ban on protests near BGW in the 2000 Injunction, nonetheless had the effect of preventing demonstrators from picketing on the sidewalk near the old BGW. [A]ttempts to stand 15 feet from someone entering or leaving a clinic and to communicate a message-certainly protected on the face of the injunction-will be hazardous if one wishes to remain in compliance.... Id. at 378, 117 S. Ct. 855. Given that the sidewalk in front of BGW's old location was only seventeen feet wide, the room to maneuver was limited. Id. Since protestors might react by refraining from expressive activity near BGW even when that activity poses no obstacle to clinic access, the Supreme Court struck down the floating zones. Id. at 379, 117 S. Ct. 855. 60 In the case of the enlarged buffer zones in the 2000 Injunction, we need not engage in any sophisticated analysis of how the zones might chill protest activity on the public sidewalk at BGW. The new injunction does not chill this type of interaction-it effectively bans it. Like the 1992 protestor worried about compliance, the 2000 protestor must stand far and clear of the BGW facility. What the 1992 Injunction caused indirectly, the 2000 Injunction accomplishes with direct action: the effective prohibition of close range communication in public areas near BGW. 61 Concerning the 1992 Injunction, the Schenck Court held that such a separation between protestors and individuals entering clinics cannot be sustained on the record before it. Id. at 377, 117 S. Ct. 855. Without meaning to minimize the significant difficulties created by current protest activity at BGW, the pattern of illegal behavior in 2000 is a shadow of that faced by clinics in 1990, when the original complaint was filed. At the time, clinics suffered through numerous large-scale blockades. Id. at 362, 117 S. Ct. 855. As part of their strategy to stop and disrupt clinic operations, protestors trespassed onto clinic parking lots, sometimes threw themselves on top of the hoods of [oncoming] cars, and milled around doorways and driveway entrances. Id. at 363-64, 117 S. Ct. 855. These constant protests overwhelmed the local police, who had been unable to respond effectively. Id. at 364, 117 S. Ct. 855. The 2000 Injunction targets a pattern of illegal activity that lacks this ferocity. Although protestors still crowd and shout at oncoming cars and patients, police are no longer overwhelmed by their behavior. The most egregious acts, such as the illegal practice of staging large scale blockades, are largely gone. If the 1990 record was insufficient to sustain an indirect ban on communicative activity at BGW, then the record here must be insufficient to support an even greater incursion on First Amendment activities. 17 62 The viability of injunctive restrictions on speech activity often rises and falls on its overall effect on free speech activities. On this point, Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000), is instructive. The Hill Court upheld a Colorado statute imposing eight-foot no-approach zones when protestors were trying to communicate within one hundred feet of health care facilities. In part, the statute survived constitutional review because it left open ample alternative channels of communication. Id. at 726, 120 S. Ct. 2480. From a distance of eight feet, people entering clinics could read protestors' placards, id.; a speaker could communicate at a `normal conversational distance,' id. at 726-27, 120 S. Ct. 2480 (quoting Schenck, 519 U.S. at 377); and a leafletter could stand near the path of oncoming pedestrians and proffer[] his or her material, which the pedestrian can easily accept, id. at 727, 117 S. Ct. 855. No such opportunities are present at BGW under the 2000 Injunction. 63 Upon review of other cases affirming buffer zones outside of health care clinics, it is clear that the injunctions in those cases preserved greater opportunity for protestor communication than is available under the terms of the 2000 Injunction. We disagree with the plaintiffs' contention that the injunction in Madsen had a similar effect on free speech near the clinics at issue. In support of their view, the plaintiffs note that the thirty-six-foot zones upheld there required protestors to stand in front of neighboring properties or across the street. See Madsen, 512 U.S. at 770. But the clinic in Madsen sat on a narrow street of twenty-one feet. Id. at 769-70, 114 S. Ct. 2516. The zone separated protestors from cars approaching or leaving the clinic by no greater than 10 to 12 feet. Id. at 770, 114 S. Ct. 2516. The size of the protests were apparently larger than those at BGW. Id. at 758, 114 S. Ct. 2516. Moreover, the Supreme Court concluded that [t]he state court seems to have had few other options to protect access given the narrow confines around the clinic. Id. at 769, 114 S. Ct. 2516. Because BGW is positioned on a four-lane road in a commercial area, and the District Court has adequate alternatives, 18 a broad injunction is less necessary and more damaging than in Madsen. 64 The buffer zones in front of the neighboring dry-cleaning business and gas station are particularly suspect. As buffer zones extend further and further from clinic entrances, their relationship to guaranteeing clinic access becomes more attenuated and the zones require more vigorous review. In Madsen, the Supreme Court upheld thirty-six-foot buffer zones protecting clinic entrances and parking lots, but struck down similarly-sized buffer zones protecting adjacent parcels of property. Id. at 769, 771, 114 S. Ct. 2516. The Court rejected the buffer zones along the property lines of clinic neighbors absent a showing that petitioners standing on the private property have obstructed access to the clinic, blocked vehicular traffic, or otherwise unlawfully interfered with the clinic's operation.... Id. at 771, 114 S. Ct. 2516. We too reject such buffer zones in front of the neighboring businesses, particularly where as here the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that clinic access is hampered only by protestor behavior in clinic driveways and in front of clinic entrances. 65 The plaintiffs insist that the zones in front of neighboring businesses are necessary to prevent a public nuisance, if not to protect clinic access. Indeed, the District Court justified these additional no-protest areas by noting that pedestrians use the street, bus riders use the bus stop, and community members bring business to the dry-cleaner. They contend that this busy urban walkway cannot tolerate picketing. 66 We find this argument unconvincing, and believe that this use of nuisance law for such a broad prohibition of protest activities raises profound constitutional issues. The fact that Main Street is a congested pedestrian walkway makes it more, not less, apt for First Amendment protections. A public forum may be an appropriate place for expressing one's views precisely because the primary activity for which it is designed is attended with noisy crowds and vehicles, some unrest and less than perfect order. Wolin v. Port of N.Y. Auth., 392 F.2d 83, 90 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 940 (1968). Patrons of the dry-cleaning establishment may find that they have to park around the corner, or expect a short delay as they make their way to the store entrance. They may have to drive more carefully, and avoid pulling their cars up and onto the sidewalk too quickly. Such trips may be less routine because they find themselves confronted with opinions that anger them. Under our constitutional system, however, government may not sanitize our public places of such protest activity. The framers of the Constitution opted for the disharmony of controversy because they believed that in that unrest lay the best prospect of an ordered society. Wolin, 392 F.2d at 91. While narrow regulations may sometimes be necessary, they must be supported by more than a few stories of near-miss traffic accidents and frustrated customers, particularly where such regulations impair free speech as severely as the no-protest zone here. When linked together, the reasons invoked for these incremental increases in the buffer zones' dimensions form too weak a chain to support the weight of this substantial burden on First Amendment activities. 67 The District Court should have responded to the problems of protestors blockading the sidewalk, so that pedestrians cannot pass, by enjoining such behavior directly. In fact, the injunction already contains such a provision that forbids blocking, impeding or obstructing ingress to or egress from covered facilities by, for example, lining up shoulder-to-shoulder along the sidewalk outside of those clinics. On remand, the District Court should extend such protection to pedestrians who seek to use the public sidewalks in front of covered facilities, so that protestors are enjoined from blocking, impeding or obstructing pedestrians who seek to walk along the public sidewalks in front of covered facilities. 19 68 We do think that three slight alterations to the zone imposed by the new injunction should be maintained to further strengthen the zone's effectiveness, especially as the alterations have a minimal effect on First Amendment freedoms at BGW. First, in regard to the buffer zone around the pedestrian entrance to BGW, the 1992 Injunction created a roughly semicircular arc with a fifteen-foot radius measured from the doorway. Because the zone extended out only fifteen feet from the doorway, the zones did not cover the entire nineteen-foot wide sidewalk in front of the clinic. Though only a four-foot wide stretch at its thinnest point remained along the edge of Main Street, protest activity there caused great disruption. The new zone is also measured from points fifteen feet to the north and south of the doorway, but it encompasses the entire width of sidewalk in front of the BGW doorway. In other words, the new zone is rectangular in shape, rather than semicircular, a slight difference that will greatly strengthen the effectiveness of the zone. 69 The second alteration concerns the city bus stop, including a bench, that sits on the border of the driveway buffer zone. The record demonstrates that protest activity in this area created difficulties for patients and commuters attempting to use this public transit stop. A slight modification of the zone, so that it bars protest activity within three feet of the bus stop sign and bench, 20 increases that effectiveness of the clinic zones without imposing any real, additional burden on First Amendment activity. 70 Finally, a narrow no-protest corridor (measured three feet from the BGW building facade) connecting the driveway and front-entrance buffer zones will alleviate crowding problems that interfere with pedestrians or bus riders seeking to walk along the sidewalk in front of BGW. Cf. United States v. Scott, 187 F.3d 282, 291 (2d Cir. 1999) (Leval, J., dissenting). Such a narrow passageway has none of the constitutional dangers inherent in the total ban on protestor activity in front of BGW. None of these three modifications entail a significant or extraordinary expansion of the baseline buffer zones approved in Schenck. Instead, they constitute minor alterations as necessitated by the unique physical conditions of the BGW site. Accordingly, the modifications do not offend the First Amendment. 71 This record leaves little doubt that clinic access will be preserved by the old fifteen-foot buffer zone, modified only to include the strip of sidewalk at the edge of the clinic entrance, the Main Street bus stop near the BGW driveway, and the corridor along BGW's facade. While remaining mindful that the role of an appellate court is not to quibble over whether slightly smaller zones would suffice, see Schenck, 519 U.S. at 381, we note that every incremental expansion in the size of buffer zones brings smaller benefits to patients and clinics, with greater injury to free speech. At some point, the balance shifts decisively. The buffer zones at BGW passed that point when the goal shifted from only prohibiting behavior that blocks clinic access to eliminating a range of behavior that creates disorder. As one might expect, when the injunction began serving these broader goals, free speech suffered. 21 72 Accordingly, the provisions of the injunction against Melfi that expand the size of the BGW buffer zones, except for the slight modifications described above, are vacated.
73 For substantially similar reasons, we also vacate the provisions of the injunction against Melfi that expand the buffer zones at PPR. We uphold only those parts of the zone tailored to protect access to clinic entrances and driveways. 74 Like BGW, PPR is a medical facility providing reproductive health services, including abortions and a variety of counseling services. It is located along University Avenue between North and Scio Streets in Rochester, New York. Patients and clinic staff approaching PPR from University Avenue can enter in one of two ways. By car, they can turn into PPR's driveway and park in its parking lot. By foot, they can turn onto PPR's pedestrian walkway and proceed to the main entrance which is set back from the street. 75 Prior to the 2000 Injunction, protestors would gather on the sidewalk running along the parking lot. In the course of this activity, they often walked in front of cars entering and exiting through the driveway. Such gatherings also placed them in front of the pedestrian walkway. Although the District Court did not specify the typical size and frequency of protests, the record indicates that protests were apparently limited in size but held regularly. Each Tuesday night, fewer than ten demonstrators would gather for approximately four hours. Similar demonstrations were held on Saturday mornings with fewer than a dozen protestors participating. The largest monthly protest involved as many as 150 protestors praying the rosary and marching for about one hour in a rosary rally. 76 In order to clear PPR's entryways of protestors, the District Court extended the buffer zone to include much of the sidewalk bordering the facility. The no-protest zone begins at a point twenty-five feet to the north (i.e., toward North Street) of the PPR driveway. It then runs south along the sidewalk running past a stretch of grass, the twenty-foot wide driveway, another stretch of grass, the pedestrian walkway, 22 and a third fifteen-foot stretch of grass, and ends at a point fifteen feet south (i.e., toward Scio Street) of the PPR building. The last fifteen-foot stretch runs adjacent to the PPR wall, which appears to be about two stories high. In other words, over one hundred feet of sidewalk all along the PPR facility is a no-protest zone, except for an area that, when viewed from the PPR parking lot, is behind a two-story solid brick wall. As a result, demonstrators now protest across the street. 77 Our analysis of the PPR enlargements substantially tracks our treatment of the BGW zones. The evidence allegedly supporting enlargement largely consisted of behavior that would be prohibited by application of the old fifteen-foot zones. This included evidence that protestors obstructed pedestrians as they attempted to pass by or enter PPR. It also includes evidence that protestors interfered with traffic along University Avenue. Most of those traffic problems, however, apparently occurred as a result of protest activity within the PPR driveway area. Moreover, the new injunction, even if limited to fifteen feet, would be strengthened by the same features present at BGW: the elimination of the sidewalk-counselor exception and application of the injunction to the named defendants in this action. At least on this record, the injunction against Melfi at PPR is vacated to the extent it enlarges the old fifteen-foot zones. 78
79 Melfi also appeals the District Court's decision to ban her from acting as a sidewalk counselor within the buffer zones, and she urges us to reinstate the exception as provided by the 1992 Injunction, but eliminated in the 2000 Injunction. Crafted by the District Court in an effort to accommodate protest activity at subject medical facilities, the sidewalk-counselor exception permitted two protestors to enter the buffer zones for the purpose of sidewalk counseling consisting of conversation of a non-threatening nature. When the Supreme Court reviewed the 1992 Injunction it concluded that the sidewalk-counselor exception was not necessary for the buffer zones to survive constitutional scrutiny. See Schenck, 519 U.S. at 381 n.11. Other buffer zones that have passed constitutional muster did not include any sidewalk-counselor exception. See, e.g., Madsen, 512 U.S. at 757. 80 Besides being a constitutionally unnecessary accommodation, the sidewalk-counselor exception has also proven to disrupt clinic access and complicate enforcement of the injunction. In fact, insofar as protestors have disrupted clinic access in the Western District of New York, the sidewalk-counselor exception has been a primary tool used to facilitate disruptive behavior. In part, protestors abused the limited exception, which permitted only two protestors within buffer zones, by flooding the zones with many protestors. At times, the sidewalk counselors would stand in driveways and block traffic. Protestors also took advantage of the exception to stand within buffer zones even when there were no patients to counsel. When patients were present, the sidewalk counselors shouted at them through bull horns, notwithstanding that the exception permitted only conversation of a non-threatening nature. Based on this record, the District Court found that protestors used the zones to make ingress and egress unreasonably difficult. We further note that the clarity of a nonporous no-protest zone will help police violations of the District Court's order. 81 Even with the elimination of the sidewalk counselor exception, protestors will still be able to stand along the sidewalks outside of the buffer zones, picketing and praying and passing out materials. In light of the evidence indicating that the exception was logistically unsupportable, the amendment to exclude all protestors from the area immediately around entrances and driveways is narrowly tailored to serve the government interest in protecting clinic access. Accordingly, we uphold this aspect of the injunction against Melfi.
82 The injunction forbids Melfi and the other defendants from using sound amplification devices in protests at facilities providing reproductive health services, including any hospital, clinic, physician's office or other facility that provides medical, surgical, counseling or referral services relating to the human reproductive system. Primarily, the District Court explained that this provision prevents the use of devices which enable protesters to be heard inside of clinic facilities. It is unclear whether this is a blanket ban which prohibits the use of all amplification devices at all covered facilities, or simply a ban in those instances where such devices would injure, disturb or endanger patients or employees of such facilities. 23 Because the injunction already bans the making of excessively loud noises, the reference to sound amplification equipment would be redundant unless interpreted as a blanket ban. We therefore address it as such. 83 As a blanket ban on the use of sound amplification equipment, the injunction burdens more speech than necessary to achieve its goals. The District Court did not make site-by-site findings concerning the use of megaphones at covered facilities, and only referenced specific noise problems at PPR, BGW, and a third site called Greece Planned Parenthood. The Decision and Order sets forth no finding that suggests that, because such devices cause problems at some sites, they interfere with care at all sites. Several factors indicate that a site-by-site analysis of the propriety of megaphone use is more appropriate: different facilities might have buildings at varied distances from public sidewalks and protestors; the location of rooms in which care is given might differ from facility to facility; the quality of construction might vary; and the injunction covers distinct types of medical facilities, some that only make referrals to reproductive health clinics. The District Court's blanket prohibition, lacking the support of particularized findings as to how the use of devices at particular sites affects the administration of health care, is inadequate. Cf. Altman v. Bedford Cent. Sch. Dist., 245 F.3d 49, 81 (2d Cir. 2001) (requiring particularized findings, rather than a blanket prohibition, where particular factors may influence the legality of enjoined behavior). The provision is not narrowly tailored to achieve its goal, and is thus vacated and remanded for additional findings and refinement so that any ban only applies to those sites requiring such additional noise control.