Opinion ID: 552172
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Clinics

Text: 19 As we have noted, the district court dismissed for lack of standing the abortion clinics that were not blockaded by defendants during the week of July 4. Although these facilities were potential targets of defendants' activities during that week and remain potential targets for their future demonstrations, the court concluded that the clinics had not established a real and immediate threat of future injury. We disagree. Considering defendants' past and likely future conduct, we believe that RHCC, Planned Parenthood, and AWC (the dismissed plaintiffs) are as vulnerable to future harassment by defendants as are the clinics that were actually subjected to blockades during the week of July 4. We therefore think that these clinics should also be protected by the court's permanent injunction. 20 Article III of the Constitution requires a litigant to allege an actual case or controversy before invoking the jurisdiction of a federal court. In particular, [t]he plaintiff must show that he 'has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury' as the result of the challenged ... conduct and [that] the injury or threat of injury [is] both 'real and immediate,' not 'conjectural' or 'hypothetical.'  City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 101-02, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 1665, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983) (citations omitted); see also Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (Art[icle] III requires the party who invokes the court's authority to 'show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant'....) (quoting Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979)). 21 To establish a present case or controversy in an action for injunctive relief, a plaintiff must show that he or she is likely to suffer future injury from defendant's threatened illegal conduct. See Lyons, 461 U.S. at 105, 103 S.Ct. at 1666. The district court therefore properly focused on whether the threat to the clinics is sufficiently 'real and immediate,'  id. at 103, 103 S.Ct. at 1665 (quoting O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 496, 94 S.Ct. 669, 676, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974)). After reviewing the record, however, we cannot agree with the court's conclusion that the threat of future harm to these clinics is insufficiently concrete to confer standing. 22 As we mentioned earlier, the dismissed clinics are all facilities that perform abortions in the Philadelphia area. In June of 1988, when this action began, these clinics faced the very real threat that they would be effectively shut down during the week of July 4 as a result of defendants' demonstrations. Media accounts of Operation Rescue's earlier activities in New York City reported that the defendants planned to launch similar rescue missions in Philadelphia during the week of July 4, 1988. Based on this information, the district court granted a TRO, including the now-dismissed clinics within its protective embrace. 23 Only three clinics were ultimately blockaded by defendants during the week of July 4. Although the intensity of defendants' campaign thereafter waned, the district court determined that Operation Rescue is likely to continue blockading clinics in the Philadelphia area and therefore granted a permanent injunction as to clinics previously blockaded. Apparently because RHCC, Planned Parenthood, and AWC were not blockaded on July 5, 6, or 9, the court thought that these clinics no longer require judicial protection. There is nothing in the record, however, that indicates that the dismissed clinics are at any less risk than are the clinics that were actually targeted by the defendants during the week of July 4. The dismissed clinics' inability to prove that Operation Rescue has specifically targeted them does not mean that they are not threatened by the defendants' harassment. Operation Rescue, as part of its modus operandi, refuses to disclose in advance the targets of its demonstrations. In a cognate case, the Second Circuit concluded that this veil of secrecy increases, rather than diminishes, the threat that Operation Rescue poses: 24 [D]efendants' tactics add to the threatened danger that the clinics will suffer a real and immediate injury, because Operation Rescue insists on keeping secret which clinics it has targeted. Absent a known and specific target, each of the plaintiff clinics cannot help but assume that it is the one slated for a disruption of its business activities. This insistence on secrecy coupled with Operation Rescue's ability to muster quickly hundreds of participants at a chosen sight necessarily broadens the scope of the threat Operation Rescue poses to all the plaintiff clinics. 25 New York State National Organization for Women v. Terry, 886 F.2d 1339, 1348 (2d Cir.1989), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 110 S.Ct. 2206, 109 L.Ed.2d 532 (1990). 26 In sum, the evidence shows that defendants possess strong anti-abortion views and that part of their strategy to garner popular support for their views is to organize massive protests at abortion clinics in large metropolitan areas. Accordingly, the threat that defendants will cause future harm to facilities such as the dismissed clinics is both real and immediate. The immediacy of this threat is underscored by the fact that two of the dismissed clinics, RHCC and Planned Parenthood, were blockaded by defendants after the week of July 4. We therefore believe that the district court erred in dismissing RHCC, Planned Parenthood, and AWC for lack of standing. We will reverse on this point and remand to the district court with instructions to reinstate these three plaintiffs as parties and to extend to them the benefit of the injunction.