The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge to the legality of buffer zones used to protect access to abortion clinics and limit harassment of patients in a challenge brought by anti-abortion activists who have argued that their free speech rights were being violated.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a pair of cases from abortion opponents who say laws limiting anti-abortion demonstrations near clinics violate their First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court will not hear a pair of cases that may have allowed sidewalk counselors at abortion clinics to get as close as 8 feet away.

In the years since the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion and since Texas instituted one of the country’s strictest abortion bans, the state has seen an increased rate of sepsis among women who lost their pregnancies in the second trimester.

On June 22, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established a half-century before in Roe v. Wade, opening the door to state abortion bans across the country.

At issue was a 25-year precedent that allows local governments to create protest-free buffer zones around all health-care facilities, not just abortion clinics.

Justices Thomas and Alito dissented from the court’s refusal to reconsider a 25-year-old precedent upholding “buffer zones” around abortion clinics.

The cities argued that the restrictions were enacted to curb disturbing behavior from protesters outside health care facilities.

Abortion opponents wanted the Supreme Court to scrap protest restrictions around clinics. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have taken the case.

Justice Clarence Thomas issued a scathing dissent Monday after the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging free speech rights around abortion clinics, suggesting he wants to revisit the matter after the court ended the federal constitutional right to abortion in 2022.

The Supreme Court decd to take up cases challenging abortion clinic “ zones” that impose protest restrictions around abortion clinics in Illinois and New Jersey. The high […]

The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear a pair of cases from abortion opponents who say laws limiting anti-abortion demonstrations near clinics violate their First Amendment rights.