Court Opinion

ID: 9548448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:03:45.210228+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:58.361332
License: Public Domain

Andersen, J.
(dissenting in part) — I disagree with the majority's decision to uphold the place restriction in the trial court's permanent injunction because it seems obvious to me that it is an overbroad restraint of citizens' constitutional rights to publicly express their views.
At issue in this case are the competing rights of those people having opposing views on abortion. On the one side are women who have the legal and constitutional right to obtain abortions, and doctors who have the right to perform them, so long as all concerned comply with this state's abortion laws.10 On the other side are those who oppose abortion and who have the legal and constitutional right to express their views by peacefully picketing and distributing leaflets in public forums such as the streets and sidewalks of our cities.11
On the one hand, the abortion proponents have the right to ignore the opponents' signs and leaflets or to consider them, as they deem fit. On the other hand, the abortion opponents have the right to peacefully and publicly declare their opinions on the subject. The law as we have stated it with regard to labor picketing is equally applicable in the *258context of abortion picketing:
Peaceful picketing is an exercise of the right of free speech. Organized labor has the right to communicate its views either by word of mouth or by the use of placards. This is nothing more nor less than a method of persuasion. But when picketing ceases to be used for the purpose of persuasion — just the minute it steps over the line from persuasion to coercion — it loses the protection of the constitutional guaranty of free speech, and a person or persons injured by its acts may apply to a court of equity for relief.
Swenson v. Seattle Cent. Labor Coun., 27 Wn.2d 193, 206, 177 P.2d 873, 170 A.L.R. 1082 (1947), cited in Gazzam v. Building Serv. Employees Local 262, 29 Wn.2d 488, 498, 188 P.2d 97, 11 A.L.R.2d 1330 (1947) and Audubon Homes, Inc. v. Spokane Bldg. & Constr. Trades Coun., 49 Wn.2d 145, 151, 298 P.2d 1112 (1956), cert. denied, 354 U.S. 942, 1 L. Ed. 2d 1536, 77 S. Ct. 1392 (1957).
The fact that the sidewalk picketing became "aggressive, disorderly, and coercive" (as the trial court described the picketers here) does not justify the court in then proceeding to so restrict the right to picket as to render it totally meaningless. As the United States Supreme Court held in Hague v. Committee for Indus. Org., 307 U.S. 496, 515-16, 83 L. Ed. 1423, 59 S. Ct. 954 (1939), the right of citizens to publicly discuss their views on important issues is one which our society holds dear:
Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and . . . have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all; it is not absolute, but relative, and must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience, and in consonance with peace and good order; but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied.
*259(Italics mine.) The majority concedes that "the First Amendment sharply curtails the government's ability to permissibly restrict expressive conduct" in public forums such as streets and sidewalks. Majority, at 222. I believe that the place restriction contained in the trial court's permanent injunction unconstitutionally abridges the protected right of citizens to express their views on abortion, which is undeniably a national issue that has aroused considerable public debate.
As the majority also acknowledges, place restrictions on constitutionally protected expression are valid only if narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest.12 The significant interests that the majority cites as justification for the geographical restriction imposed on the picketers are (1) facilitating actual ingress into and access from the Medical Building and (2) reducing the coercive impact of picketing upon patients and staff of the Medical Building.
It is interesting to note that the permanent injunction ordered by the trial court does protect both of these interests and does so independently of the place restriction it also imposes. In addition to restricting picketers to the Stevens Avenue location, the injunction properly prohibits the abortion picketers from "interfering with ingress or egress at the building or parking lots to the south or southeast of the premises", from "threatening, assaulting, intimidating or coercing anyone entering or leaving the Medical Building", and from "engaging in any unlawful activity directed at respondent-physicians or their patients." Thus, anyone who violates one of these three provisions of the injunction will be liable for contempt regardless of where around the Medical Building he or she is picketing. That is both appropriate and legal.
The geographical restriction in the injunction, therefore, is surplusage that unnecessarily restrains constitutionally *260protected expression. If a place restriction on the antiabortion picketers is needed (in the opinion of the trial court on remand), given the other restrictions contained in the injunction, it should be narrowed from the unduly broad place restraint currently in effect. I agree with the majority at page 231 that the place restriction could be narrowed by (1) limiting the numbers of picketers, (2) requiring them to remain a certain distance away from the walkway leading to the entrance, (3) requiring them to picket in single file, or (4) all of the above. I depart from the majority because I would hold that the remand to the trial court should include instructions to that court to narrow the injunction's place restriction placed upon the antiabortion picketers. In my view, when the trial court limited picketing to a location around the corner and down the block from the entrance to the building, it left no alternative channel of communication open to the picketers and, as a consequence, the place restriction was overly broad and unnecessarily restrictive.13 The injunction could accord the same protections to the patrons of the clinic and their doctors without resorting to that.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent from only that part of the majority's opinion which upholds the place restrictions in the tried court's injunction, and from the contempt convictions based thereon.

 See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147, 93 S. Ct. 705, reh'g denied, 410 U.S. 959, 35 L. Ed. 2d 694, 93 S. Ct. 1409 (1973); RCW 9.02.060.

 See United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 176, 75 L. Ed. 2d 736, 103 S. Ct. 1702 (1983).

 See Grace, at 177; Perry Educ. Ass'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass'n, 460 U.S. 37, 45, 74 L. Ed. 2d 794, 103 S. Ct. 948 (1983).

 Parkmed Co. v. Pro-Life Counselling, Inc., 91 A.D.2d 551, 552, 457 N.Y.S.2d 27, 29 (1982).