From today's
Washington Post:
The
Bush administration has urged the Supreme Court to deny an appeal by
antiabortion activists who say that the "wanted" posters of abortion providers
they distributed are a form of constitutionally protected political
_expression_.
In a 19-page brief filed with the court on
Friday and made public yesterday, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson told the
justices that a lower federal appeals court had correctly decided that the
posters constituted not free speech but "true threats" to the doctors' physical
safety.
"The court of appeals articulated a First
Amendment standard that correctly distinguishes between protected advocacy and
unprotected threats," Olson wrote.
Olson noted that the posters, unveiled by
the American Coalition of Life Activists in January 1995, contained no
explicitly threatening language but were similar to others that had carried the
pictures, names and addresses of three doctors who had been murdered in 1993 and
1994. Also, the activists gave personal data on the doctors, which they called
"the Nuremberg Files," to an antiabortion Web site, where they were posted
beside the crossed-out names of the murdered doctors. In that context, a
reasonable person would have concluded that his safety was in jeopardy, Olson
added.
Full story available
here:
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Jonathan H. Adler
Assistant Professor of Law
Case Western Reserve University School of
Law
11075 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106
ph) 216-368-2535
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
