Court Opinion

ID: 9704786
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:46:43.687534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:05.526503
License: Public Domain

*482O’Connor, J.
(dissenting, with whom Nolan and Lynch, JJ., join). The defendant organizations and individuals and “their officers, agents, servants, employees and those persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this Order, either orally or by receipt of a copy thereof, are permanently enjoined, individually and collectively, from:
“a. trespassing on, blocking or in any way obstructing access (either ingress or egress) to any facility in the Commonwealth which provides abortion counselling or services; or
“b. physically restraining or obstructing or committing any acts of force or violence against persons entering, leaving, working at or seeking to obtain services from any facility in the Commonwealth which provides abortion counselling or services; or
“c. directing, instructing, conspiring with and/or aiding or abetting directly or indirectly any person, persons, groups or organizations who engage in any of the acts described in paragraphs (a) and (b) above.”
In my view, clauses (a) and (c) are constitutionally over-broad and should be vacated. In my dissent in Planned Parenthood League of Mass., Inc. v. Operation Rescue, 406 Mass. 701 (1990) (Planned Parenthood I), I presented my argument that clause (a) of the preliminary injunction at issue in that case was overbroad. My view has not changed. Therefore, because clause (a) of the permanent injunction at issue in this case is substantially the same as clause (a) of the preliminary injunction at issue in Planned Parenthood I, I dissent in the present case.
No worthwhile purpose would be served by a full repetition here of the views expressed in the earlier dissent. Essen*483tially, my position was and is that an injunction against the defendants and others “in active concert or participation with them” from “trespassing on, blocking, or in any way obstructing access” (emphasis added) to abortion facilities, is overbroad because “reasonable persons, wishing to express their views about the morality of abortion and whether abortion should be legal, [cannot] be confident that they would not violate that injunction by joining others on public ways adjacent to a clinic to picket, pray, chant, and exhort others to accept their viewpoint. The injunction expressly forbids not only trespassing and blocking, but also ‘obstructing’ ingress or egress in any way. It cannot reasonably be said that the prohibition against obstruction [in any way] adds nothing to the prohibition against trespassing and blocking [, both of which terms connote physical interference]. Such-a result can be reached only by reading words out of the injunction. The injunction must fairly be construed as prohibiting the hindrance of access to clinics by nonphysical confrontation on public ways as well as the physical block [ing] of entranceways.” Planned Parenthood I, supra at 721-722 (O’Connor, J., dissenting). Therefore, clause (a) and clause (c), which incorporates clause (a), impermissibly chill, even if they are not intended to prohibit, conduct protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.