March 17, 2003
Racketeering law cannot be used against abortion protesters
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--A law meant to prevent racketeering and extortion by organized crime cannot be used to punish anti-abortion-rights protesters, according to the Supreme Court. The justices ruled 8-1 on Feb. 26 that the federal Racketeer and Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, could not apply to abortion protesters in two cases that were combined.
___The cases were Scheidler vs. National Organization for Women and Operation Rescue vs. National Organization for Women. In both cases--whose history dates from the large anti-abortion civil disobedience of the 1980s--NOW and abortion providers had sued to prevent a coalition of strident anti-abortion groups from blocking access to abortion providers across the country.
___RICO enables organizations to sue for violations of the Hobbs Act, an earlier anti-racketeering law. That statute outlaws hindering commerce "by robbery or extortion." If an organization violates the Hobbs Act on more than two occasions, they can be sued under RICO, which also allows for tripling fines for damages in lawsuits.
___The court's majority said that although the protesters may have acted illegally, it did not constitute an actual violation of the Hobbs Act. "We hold that petitioners did not commit extortion because they did not ... obtain property from respondents as required by the Hobbs Act," Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in the majority opinion.
___A 1998 decision in federal district court in Illinois awarded $85,900 in damages from the coalition of anti-abortion groups to the two clinics represented by NOW. That amount would have been tripled under RICO. After the groups appealed the decision, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's ruling.
___But the High Court overturned that ruling.
___"There is no dispute in these cases that petitioners interfered with, disrupted and in some instances completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise their property rights," Rehnquist wrote. "Likewise, petitioners' counsel readily acknowledged at oral argument that aspects of his clients' conduct were criminal. But even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of 'shutting down' a clinic that performed abortions, such acts did not constitute extortion because petitioners did not 'obtain' respondents' property. Petitioners may have deprived or sought to deprive respondents of their alleged property right of exclusive control of their business assets, but they did not acquire any such property."
___The anti-abortion groups gained support for their case, in the form of friend-of-the-court briefs, from an unlikely array of organizations that practice civil disobedience--such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Those groups argued that applying RICO to such acts of civil disobedience would have a chilling effect on their free-speech rights.
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