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High court says RICO was misapplied to abortion protest case
Seventeen years after Roman Catholic abortion activist Joseph Scheidler and other pro-life advocates were sued by abortion clinics under 1970's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that racketeering laws are not applicable to the case.

The National Organization of Women (NOW) v. Scheidler was filed in 1986 and charged Scheidler's Pro-Life Action League, Operation Rescue, and other prolife groups with attempting to crash the abortion industry through a "pattern of racketeering activity."

A federal judge originally ruled in 1991 that RICO, which was designed to fight organized crime, could not be used against abortion protests. However, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling in 1994 saying that it could apply.

This ruling led to the 1998 decision that forced three prolife activists, Scheidler, Andrew Scholberg, and Timothy Murphy, to pay $85, 900 to two abortion clinics represented in court by NOW. Under RICO, all fines are tripled which raised the price to $257,000, plus attorney fees.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the case two years later. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in April. A coalition of 70 activists presented oral arguments in December.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, wrote in the decision yesterday that RICO prosecution requires evidence of an underlying crime, such as extortion. The high court ruled, however, that there was no proof.

"It is undisputed that petitioners interfered with, disrupted, and in some instances completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise their property rights," wrote Rehnquist. "But even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of shutting down an abortion clinic, such acts did not constitute extortion because petitioners did not 'obtain' respondents' property."

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of The American Center for Law and Justice, who represented one of the pro-life organizations in the case, said in a press release that the decision is a "tremendous victory" for social activism. "The decision removes a cloud that has been hanging over the pro-life movement for 15 years," he said. "The ruling clearly shuts the door on using RICO against the pro-life movement."

John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, said yesterday in a press release that the verdict removes a chilling effect on the speech of activists. "The Supreme Court's near-unanimous decision gives breathing room for the First Amendment-protected speech of many political groups that have been virtually shut out of public debate because of threats of huge fines like those imposed on these protesters," he said. "No longer can the civil liability provisions of the RICO Act be used as a bludgeon to silence dissenters from rightfully expressing their views in a public forum."

A Chicago Tribune editorial today also points out that because of the freedom of speech issues involved, "all Americans should applaud the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Wednesday, no matter where they stand individually on the divisive issue of abortion."

Family Research Council President Ken Connor said the case was only built on the abortion industry trying to silence opposition. That ability, he says on the FRC website, has been taken away. "What NOW and other pro-abortion groups want to do is threaten pro-lifers with financial ruin in order to silence debate. The irony is that [if they protest this decision, they] will be exercising the very rights they seek to deny to others. The hypocrisy is breathtaking."

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47