Return to Home
 
  Freedom Line
   




The Center is absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. The right to free speech must be protected, because if it is lost, then so, too, will be many of the other freedoms.


 

 

 

Victory for the First Amendment

The First Amendment scored a victory on March 28 -- albeit an exceptionally controversial one.

Ruling for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists, a three-judge panel unanimously reversed a lower court decision that fined abortion opponents $109 million. The abortion opponents had produced an internet web site and wanted posters that attacked abortion doctors as "baby butchers," charged them with "crimes against humanity" and listed their names and addresses. Neither the posters nor the web site contained any explicit threats against any individuals.

The lawsuit had been brought by Planned Parenthood and four doctors who had been named in the anti-abortion materials. At the original jury trial, the lower court judge instructed the jury to consider prior acts of violence by opponents of abortion. Three abortion doctors were killed after their names had been publicized and others testified of living in fear. The court instructed the jury that defendants could only be liable if their statements were "true threats" and therefore unprotected by the First Amendment.

The appeals court ruling distinguished between violent acts actually committed by abortion opponents acting alone or working with others and speech which may have encouraged the acts of unrelated terrorists. The latter was deemed to be protected speech under the First Amendment.

While an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court must be assumed, a recent Supreme Court ruling that speech is protected unless threats are explicit with the likelihood of causing "imminent lawless action" would tend to indicate that the appeals court ruling will stand.

The Center for Individual Freedom is absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. The right to free speech must be protected, because if it is lost, then so, too, will be many of the other freedoms that are required to retain the brilliantly woven tapestry of our constitutional system.

To defend free speech is not to defend the instigation of violence ? direct or remote. To defend free speech is not to defend any of the causes which seek its protection. To defend free speech is not to defend the specific speech that so often offends or hurts or causes social turmoil. It is to defend the principle. That principle does not and cannot distinguish the quality of speech, the morality of speech or the ramifications of speech. It simply says it must be free.

The day after the appeals court ruling for the abortion opponents, French police arrested the suspect in the 1998 murder of a U.S. abortion doctor. He will be tried under the law and, if found guilty, he could be executed.

Both the appeals court ruling for free speech and the application of the law to a horrendous crime that may be related to that speech are appropriate. Those who disagree should say so, in our Forum, We the People, if they choose. The debate will underscore the principle that we are so determined to preserve.

Return to Freedom Line Archive