National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra | |
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Argued March 20, 2018 Decided June 26, 2018 | |
Full case name | National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, dba NIFLA, et al., Petitioners v. Xavier Becerra, Attorney General of California, et al. |
Docket no. | 16-1140 |
Citations | 585 U.S. 755 ( more ) 138 S. Ct. 2361; 201 L. Ed. 2d 835 |
Argument | Oral argument |
Decision | Opinion |
Case history | |
Prior | Motion for preliminary injunction denied, No. 3:15-cv-02277-JAH-DHB, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92612 (S.D. Cal. 2016); aff'd , 839 F.3d 823 (9th Cir. 2016); cert. granted, 138 S. Ct. 464 (2017). |
Holding | |
The California Reproductive FACT Act, which required crisis pregnancy centers to alert clients about state-assisted abortions, violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Thomas, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Gorsuch |
Concurrence | Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch |
Dissent | Breyer, joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. I |
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, 585 U.S. 755 (2018), was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States addressing the constitutionality of California's FACT Act, which mandated that crisis pregnancy centers provide certain disclosures about state services. The law required that licensed centers post visible notices that other options for pregnancy, including abortion, are available from state-sponsored clinics. It also mandated that unlicensed centers post notice of their unlicensed status. The centers, typically run by Christian non-profit groups, challenged the act on the basis that it violated their free speech. After prior reviews in lower courts, the case was brought to the Supreme Court, asking "Whether the disclosures required by the California Reproductive FACT Act violate the protections set forth in the free speech clause of the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment." [1]
The Court ruled on June 26, 2018, in a 5–4 decision that the notices required by the FACT Act likely violate the First Amendment by targeting speakers rather than speech. [2]
A crisis pregnancy center (CPC) is a type of nonprofit organization established to counsel pregnant women against having an abortion. [3] [4] [5] CPCs provide peer counseling related to abortion, pregnancy, and childbirth, and they may offer non-medical services such as financial assistance, child-rearing resources, and adoption referrals. [6] CPCs that qualify as medical clinics may provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services. [7] CPCs are typically run by anti-abortion Christians according to a conservative Christian philosophy, and thus do not recommend abortion as an option for pregnancy. [8]
Medical professionals and abortion-rights advocates allege that CPCs omit information, provide false or misleading information regarding abortion, and may lead women to unsafe medical options. [9] Cities like Baltimore, Austin, and New York passed legislation to require CPCs to disclose their status and that they did not offer abortion services, but organizations representing the CPCs have been successful in courts challenging these laws, principally on the argument that forcing the CPCs to post such language violated their First Amendment rights and constituted compelled speech. [10] [11]
Based on a report prepared by NARAL Pro-Choice America, which alleged that CPCs were providing misleading and inaccurate information, [12] the California State Legislature passed the Reproductive FACT (Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency) Act (AB-775) in October 2015. It required any licensed healthcare facility that provided care services related to pregnancies to post a notice that stated "California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women." The law set provisions where this notice was to be posted and established civil fines if facilities did not comply. [13] [ original research? ] The Act required unlicensed facilities which offered certain pregnancy-related services to post a notice stating: "This facility is not licensed as a medical facility by the State of California and has no licensed medical provider who provides or directly supervises the provision of all of the services, whose primary purpose is providing pregnancy-related services." [14] [ original research? ] Whereas the previous attempts at regulating CPCs in Baltimore and other cities were based on having signage that informed the patient that the CPC did not offer abortion-related services, the FACT Act instead makes the patient aware of state-sponsored services that are available rather than what the CPCs did or did not offer. [9] The law went into effect January 1, 2016. [14] [ original research? ]
CPCs and the Pacific Justice Institute filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Reproductive FACT Act. The CPCs asserted that the law's requirements constituted compelled speech in violation of their rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. [9] Among these was a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) who represented over 100 CPCs in California. NIFLA sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the Reproductive FACT Act from coming into force on January 1, 2016, while the lawsuit continued. The Court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction in February 2016. NIFLA appealed from the denial of the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in June 2016, which affirmed the judgment of the District Court in a unanimous decision authored by Judge Dorothy W. Nelson, joined by Judges A. Wallace Tashima and John B. Owens. [14]
The Ninth Circuit decision noted that the existence of a circuit split on the issue of the proper level of scrutiny to apply in cases relating to abortion-related disclosures, and agreed with the Fourth Circuit that the Supreme Court's decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey [15] did not resolve this question. The Court held that the notice that the state required to be posted in licensed facilities constituted professional speech, subject to intermediate scrutiny, and that the notice survived intermediate scrutiny because California has "a substantial interest in the health of its citizens, including ensuring that its citizens have access to and adequate information about constitutionally-protected medical services like abortion" and because the notice was "narrowly drawn to achieve California's substantial interests." [14] The Court further held that the required notice for unlicensed facilities would survive any standard of review—even strict scrutiny —holding that "California has a compelling interest in informing pregnant women when they are using the medical services of a facility that has not satisfied licensing standards set by the state. And given the Legislature’s findings regarding the existence of CPCs, which often present misleading information to women about reproductive medical services, California’s interest in presenting accurate information about the licensing status of individual clinics is particularly compelling." [14] The Court also ruled that the petitioners had no likelihood of success on their claim that the law violated their rights under the Free Exercise Clause. Citing Employment Division v. Smith , the court held that the law was a "neutral law of general applicability, subject to only rational basis review." [14]
The Ninth Circuit denied a motion for rehearing en banc in December 2016. [16]
NIFLA filed a petition for writ of certiorari in March 2017, asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, pointing to the circuit split identified in the Ninth Circuit's decision. NIFLA specifically asked the Court to decide the question of "Whether the Free Speech Clause or the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment prohibits California from compelling licensed anti-abortion centers to post information on how to obtain a state-funded abortion and from compelling unlicensed anti-abortion centers to disseminate a disclaimer to clients on site and in any print and digital advertising." [16] The Court agreed to hear the case in November 2017. [17]
NIFLA was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. [18]
Oral arguments were held on March 20, 2018. Observers of the arguments believed the Court favored the CPCs and agreed with their arguments that the legal requirements of the Reproductive FACT Act not only burdened the free speech of the centers, but also put a burden on the centers to post the notice –for example, CPCs in Los Angeles County would be required to post the notice in 13 different languages. [19] At oral argument, a number of justices said they believed that the FACT Act was written specifically to target CPCs; Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether that the law was "gerrymandered" to impact CPCs rather than all pregnancy service providers. [20] [21] The Court also considered the FACT Act in relationship to the Court's previous ruling of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the constitutionality of a Pennsylvanian law that required doctors performing abortions to provide their clients with health information related to them. [20]
The Court announced judgment on June 26, 2018 in favor of the challengers. In the 5–4 decision, split between the conservative and liberal justices, the Court ruled that both notices required by the FACT Act likely violated the free speech principles of the First Amendment, reversing the Ninth Circuit's decision and remanding the case there for review. [22] Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, and Gorsuch. [23] Thomas identified that the FACT Act targeted the speaker of the language demanded by the Act rather than the speech itself, which conflicted with the First Amendment. He wrote that the FACT Act "imposes a government-scripted, speaker-based disclosure requirement that is wholly disconnected from the State’s informational interest", and because it only applied to a specific classification of facilities, it could be seen as compelled speech for those in the CPCs that disagreed with the state's stance on abortion. [24] Thomas' opinion rejected the Ninth Circuit's conclusion that the FACT Act was equivalent to "professional speech", defined through Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio , 471 U.S. 626(1985) as "factual, noncontroversial information" that is less protected by the First Amendment, as the FACT Act notice dealt with the controversial topic of abortion. Instead, Thomas argued, the state could use public advertising or even post public notices near the CPCs to achieve the same message without violating the First Amendment. [24] In regard to the notice for unlicensed centers, Thomas found that the state had not proved anything more than a "purely hypothetical" harm that the notices were to remedy, following Ibanez v. Florida Dept. of Business and Professional Regulation, Bd. of Accountancy, 512 U.S. 136(1994), and even if they had demonstrated such harm, the notices would still run afoul of the First Amendment challenges.
Justice Kennedy wrote a concurrence, which was also joined by Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch, which further asserted that the FACT Act was specifically targeting anti-abortion centers, describing it as "This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression". [24]
Justice Breyer wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Breyer took issue with the majority's take on the First Amendment, using a heightened standard to test the First Amendment applicability as established from Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. , 564 U.S. 552(2011). [25] Breyer also criticized the majority's opinion in light of the Court's decision from Planned Parenthood v. Casey , 505 U.S. 833(1992), in which the Court affirmed the constitutionality of a law requiring physicians to provide women considering abortions with information related to adoption. Breyer wrote "a Constitution that allows States to insist that medical providers tell women about the possibility of adoption should also allow States similarly to insist that medical providers tell women about the possibility of abortion". [24]
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established by the "essential holding" of Roe v. Wade (1973) and issued as its "key judgment" the restoration of the undue burden standard when evaluating state-imposed restrictions on that right. Both the essential holding of Roe and the key judgment of Casey were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, with its landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was a case in the United States Supreme Court that upheld Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion. The department had removed all family planning programs that involving abortions. Physicians and clinics challenged this decision within the Supreme Court, arguing that the First Amendment was violated due to the implementation of this new policy. The Supreme Court, by a 5–4 verdict, allowed the regulation to go into effect, holding that the regulation was a reasonable interpretation of the Public Health Service Act, and that the First Amendment is not violated when the government merely chooses to "fund one activity to the exclusion of another."
A crisis pregnancy center (CPC), sometimes called a pregnancy resource center (PRC) or a pro-life pregnancy center, is a type of nonprofit organization established by anti-abortion groups primarily to persuade pregnant women not to have an abortion. In the United States, CPCs that qualify as medical clinics may also provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services, while many others operate without medical licensing under varying degrees of regulation.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act is a United States law that was signed by President Bill Clinton in May 1994, which prohibits the following three things: (1) the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person who is obtaining an abortion, (2) the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, interfere with or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person who is exercising or trying to exercise their First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship, (3) the intentional damage or destruction of a reproductive health care facility or a place of worship.
Governments sometimes take measures designed to afford legal protection of access to abortion. Such legislation often seeks to guard facilities which provide induced abortion against obstruction, vandalism, picketing, and other actions, or to protect patients and employees of such facilities from threats and harassment.
The timeline of women's legal rights (other than voting) represents formal changes and reforms regarding women's rights. The changes include actual law reforms, as well as other formal changes (e.g. reforms through new interpretations of laws by precedents). The right to vote is exempted from the timeline: for that right, see Timeline of women's suffrage. The timeline excludes ideological changes and events within feminism and antifeminism; for that, see Timeline of feminism.
This is a timeline of reproductive rights legislation, a chronological list of laws and legal decisions affecting human reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are a sub-set of human rights pertaining to issues of reproduction and reproductive health. These rights may include some or all of the following: the right to legal or safe abortion, the right to birth control, the right to access quality reproductive healthcare, and the right to education and access in order to make reproductive choices free from coercion, discrimination, and violence. Reproductive rights may also include the right to receive education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization, abortion, and contraception, and protection from practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM).
Abortion has been legal in India under various circumstances with the introduction of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, 1971. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Regulations, 2003 were issued under the Act to enable women to access safe and legal abortion services.
The legality of abortion in the United States and the various restrictions imposed on the procedure vary significantly depending on the laws of each state or other jurisdiction. Some states prohibit abortion at all stages of pregnancy with few exceptions, others permit it up to a certain point in a woman's pregnancy, while others allow abortion throughout a woman's pregnancy. In states where abortion is legal, several classes of restrictions on the procedure may exist, such as parental consent or notification laws, requirements that patients be shown an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion, mandatory waiting periods, and counseling requirements.
Abortion is the termination of human pregnancy, often performed in the first 28 weeks of pregnancy. In 1973, the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade recognized a constitutional right to obtain an abortion without excessive government restriction, and in 1992 the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey invalidated restrictions that create an undue burden on people seeking abortions. Since then, there has continued to be an abortion debate in the United States, and some states have passed laws in the form of regulation of abortions but which have the purpose or effect of restricting its provision. The proponents of such laws argue they do not create an undue burden. Some state laws that impact the availability of abortions have been upheld by courts. In 2022, Roe and Casey were overturned by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, meaning that states may now regulate abortion in ways that were not previously permitted.
The following timeline represents formal legal changes and reforms regarding women's rights in the United States except voting rights. It includes actual law reforms as well as other formal changes, such as reforms through new interpretations of laws by precedents.
Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that states can require an advertiser to disclose certain information without violating the advertiser's First Amendment free speech protections as long as the disclosure requirements are reasonably related to the State's interest in preventing deception of consumers. The decision effected identified that some commercial speech may have weaker First Amendment free speech protections than non-commercial speech and that states can compel such commercial speech to protect their interests; future cases have relied on the "Zauderer standard" to determine the constitutionality of state laws that compel commercial speech as long as the information to be disclosed is "purely factual and uncontroversial".
Abortion in New York is legal at all stages of pregnancy, although abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy require a physician's approval. Abortion was legalized up to the 24th week of pregnancy in New York (NY) in 1970, three years before it was legalized for the entire United States with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Roe v. Wade was later overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The Reproductive Health Act, passed in 2019 in New York, further allows abortions past the 24th week of pregnancy if a woman's life or health is at risk or if the fetus is not viable. However, since these exceptions are not defined by the law, and the law carries no criminal penalties, abortion is effectively legal throughout pregnancy.
Abortion in West Virginia is illegal except in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormalities, and when the mother’s life is at risk from a pregnancy.
Abortion in California is legal up to the point of fetal viability. An abortion ban was in place by 1900, and by 1950, it was a criminal offense for a woman to have an abortion. In 1962, the American Law Institute published their model penal code as it applied to abortions, with three circumstances where they believed a physician could justifiably perform an abortion, and California adopted a version of this code. In 2002, California passed a law guaranteeing women the right to have an abortion "prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman." In 2022, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, which amended the Constitution of California to explicitly protect the right to abortion and contraception by a margin of 33.76%.
Abortion in New Hampshire is legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy as of January 1, 2022, when a new law went into effect. Prior to this, the gestational limit was unclear. Abortion was criminalized in the state by 1900. In June 2003, the state passed a parental notification law, repealing it four years later before passing a new one in 2011. New Hampshire then passed a law in 2012 which required minors to wait 48 hours after requesting an abortion but no longer required parental consent. New Hampshire law regarding abortion has been heard before the US Supreme Court in the case Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in 2006. The number of abortion clinics in New Hampshire has declined over the years, with 18 in 1982, 16 in 1992 and four in 2014. In 2010, there were three publicly funded abortions in the state; all three were federally funded. There are both active abortion rights and anti-abortion rights activists in the state.
Abortion in Maryland is legal at all stages of pregnancy. The first laws regulating abortion in the state were passed in 1867 and 1868, banning abortion except by a physician to "secure the safety of the mother." Abortion providers continued to operate both within and outside of the law. Legal enforcement became more strict from the 1940s through 60s, with numerous police raids on abortion providers. In 1968, Maryland passed a liberalized abortion law that clarified the wording of the previous law, allowing abortion in hospital settings in cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or when life and health were endangered.
Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, 686 F.3d 889, is an Eighth Circuit decision addressing the constitutionality of a South Dakota law which forced doctors to make certain disclosures to patients seeking abortions. The challenged statute required physicians to convey to their abortion-seeking patients a number of state-mandated disclosures, including a statement that abortions caused an "[i]ncreased risk of suicide ideation and suicide." Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, along with its medical director Dr. Carol E. Ball, challenged the South Dakota law, arguing that it violated patients' and physicians' First Amendment free speech rights and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. After several appeals and remands, the Eighth Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld the South Dakota law, holding that the mandated suicide advisement was not "unconstitutionally misleading or irrelevant," and did "not impose an unconstitutional burden on women seeking abortions or their physicians." This supplemented the Eighth Circuit's earlier rulings in this case, where the court determined that the state was allowed to impose a restrictive emergency exception on abortion procedures and to force physicians to convey disclosures regarding the woman's relationship to the fetus and the humanity of the fetus.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. The court's decision overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), returning to individual states the power to regulate any aspect of abortion not protected by federal statutory law.