Ruling 8 to 0, the court held that the Hobbs Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to use robbery, extortion or, under some circumstances, violence to obstruct commerce, did not provide a proper basis for the federal court injunction that NOW and two women's health clinics had obtained against groups like Operation Rescue.
A Supreme Court opinion three years ago had narrowed the case substantially, ruling that what had happened at the clinics was not "extortion" within the meaning of the Hobbs Act. That opinion also overturned an $85,000 damage award the plaintiffs had won after a federal jury trial in Chicago. The award would have been tripled under the federal racketeering law, of which the Hobbs Act claim was an essential element.
After that ruling, however, the federal appeals court in Chicago declined to lift the injunction, ruling that incidents during the clinic blockades had amounted to "physical violence" within the meaning of the Hobbs Act. But writing for the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said "violence" under that law had to have a connection to robbery and extortion.
"Congress did not intend to create a free-standing physical violence offense in the Hobbs Act," Justice Breyer said in the opinion, Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, No. 04-1244.
He noted that the passage in 1994 of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a federal law "aimed directly at the type of abortion clinic violence and other activity at issue in this litigation," suggested that Congress did not believe the Hobbs Act was available for that purpose.