The city of Minneapolis is being sued by a pro-life organization for violating the Constitution with its ban on protests at abortion businesses.
Officials with the Thomas More Society have filed the case on behalf of Pro-Life Action Ministries and several of the Christian nonprofit’s staff members.
It was filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota and charges that the city code violates the free speech, expressive association and free exercise rights that are protected by the Constitution.
“The Minneapolis ordinance, Chapter 405, enacted in November 2022, was a deliberate attempt to stifle Pro-Life Action Ministries’ sidewalk outreach outside of Planned Parenthood,” explained Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal. “Minneapolis City Councilmember Lisa Goodman was the chief author of Chapter 405. Goodman made it publicly known that the enactment of Chapter 405 was a ‘creative decision’ while she awaits a codifying of abortion rights in Minnesota and nationwide, stating, ‘Never in my 25 years of being here have I ever gotten to do something as meaningful in the reproductive rights movement.'”
Goodman also claimed, “We want the state to do something, but we want women to have access [to abortion] right now.”
The case charges that Minneapolis crossed the constitutional line by disregarding the First Amendment.
The case seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.
Kaardal warned Goodman, noting, “Councilmember Goodman, you cannot ride roughshod over the Constitution to deny freedom of speech, expressive association, and exercise of religion, regardless of what you want.”
He continued, “It’s a simple situation. The ministry of pro-life sidewalk counseling is a peaceful interaction with pregnant women to convey life-affirming alternatives to abortion. Yet the city of Minneapolis has specifically enacted an ordinance designed to prevent any success at conducting this peaceful interaction by Pro-Life Action Ministries, its staff members or volunteers, and any others involved in similar activities. And, the young pregnant woman constitutionally loses by not getting the information she may want.”
The legal team explained the offending part the city code “prohibits disrupting access to reproductive healthcare facilities and occupying driveways and defines such activities in a way that makes a calm, polite invitation to converse, made from the public right of way, impossible to achieve.”
Kaardal said the city’s moves create an “unconstitutional, content-based exclusion zone, created exclusively for the purpose of shutting down pro-life speech outside of abortion facilities.”
He also told the Daily Caller News Foundation that courts in Minnesota already have struck the state’s informed consent, 24-hour waiting period and parental notice laws.
Now, he said, “the only way for many of these young, vulnerable women to get information about alternatives to abortion is the pro-life sidewalk counselors outside abortion clinics. Yet, Minneapolis’s ordinance bans such communications. Minneapolis’s ordinance is a misogynistic and cruel suppression of free speech.”
via wnd
