Nat'l Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler

• Decision Date: 29 October 2001
• Docket Number: 99-3891,99-3336,99-3892,Nos. 99-3076,s. 99-3076
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2000) National Organization for Women, Inc., on behalf of itself and its women members and all other women who use or may use the services of women's health centers that provide abortions, and Delaware Women's Health Organization, Inc., and Summit Women's Health Organization, Inc., on behalf of themselves and the class of all women's health centers in the United States at which abortions are performed, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Joseph M. Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League, Inc., Andrew D. Scholberg, Timothy Murphy, and Operation Rescue, Defendants-Appellants. , and 01-2050
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 687

267 F.3d 687 (7th Cir. 2000)

National Organization for Women, Inc., on behalf of itself and its women members and all other women who use or may use the services of women's health centers that provide abortions, and Delaware Women's Health Organization, Inc., and Summit Women's Health Organization, Inc., on behalf of themselves and the class of all women's health centers in the United States at which abortions are performed, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Joseph M. Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League, Inc., Andrew D. Scholberg, Timothy Murphy, and Operation Rescue, Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 99-3076, 99-3336, 99-3891, 99-3892, and 01-2050

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued September 14, 2000

Decided October 2, 2001

Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Oct. 29, 2001.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 86 C 7888--David H. Coar, Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

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[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Rovner, Diane P. Wood, and Evans, Circuit Judges.

Diane P. Wood, Circuit Judge.

This case is in its fifteenth year of contentious litigation. The defendants are anti- abortion activists who employ a protest tactic they call "rescues," in which they and other activists physically block access to abortion clinics so that the patients and staff cannot get in or out of the buildings. Plaintiffs use words less benign than "rescue" to describe the defendants' activities. We will refer to them as "protest missions," in the hopes that this will be understood as a neutral term. The defendants' goal is frankly to prevent abortions from taking place. Participants in the protest missions engage in a substantial amount of protected speech, including efforts to persuade clinic patients not to have abortions and to persuade clinic doctors and staff to quit performing abortions. Unfortunately, the protest missions also involve illegal conduct: protesters do everything from sitting or lying in clinic doorways and waiting to be arrested to engaging in more egregious conduct such as entering the clinics and destroying medical equipment and chaining their bodies to operating tables to prevent the tables from being used. In a few instances, protesters apparently have physically assaulted clinic staff and patients. In addition to staging these protests, the defendants have issued letters and statements to other clinics threatening to stage missions at those clinics unless they voluntarily shut down.

The plaintiffs, the National Organization for Women (NOW) and two clinics that were the targets of protest missions, brought this class action alleging, among other things, that the defendants' conduct amounted to a pattern of extortion which violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. sec.sec. 1961-68 (RICO). The trial judge certified two classes: one, represented by NOW, of all NOW members and non-members who have used or would use the services of an abortion clinic in the United States, and a second of all such clinics. After a trip through this court to the Supreme Court of the United States during which many of the legal issues in the case were clarified or resolved, the case was remanded to the district court for trial of the plaintiffs' RICO claims. A jury found for the plaintiffs and awarded damages to the two named clinics, and the district court issued a permanent nationwide injunction prohibiting the defendants from conducting blockades, trespassing, damaging property, or committing acts of violence at the class clinics. The defen dants have appealed a wide range of issues relating to the conduct of the trial and the issuance of the injunction. We find that the district court navigated its way through this complex and difficult case with care and sensitivity and affirm its judgment in all respects.

I

Many of the facts pertinent to this opinion are set out in the Supreme Court's decision remanding the case, National Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 510 U.S. 249 (1994) (NOW I), and in our earlier decision in the case, National Organization for Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 968 F.2d 612 (7th Cir. 1992), and we will not recount them in detail here. Nonetheless, in order to put the defendants' appeal in context, a brief overview of the facts presented at trial and of the procedural history of the case may be helpful.

The individual defendants, Joseph Scheidler, Andrew Scholberg, and Timothy Murphy are on the Board of Directors of one of the corporate defendants, the Pro- Life Action League (PLAL). The other corporate defendant is Operation Rescue. (Randall Terry, the director of Operation Rescue, was also originally a defendant in the case, but he has since settled with the plaintiffs). All of the defendants were among the organizers of the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN), which is a loose national organization of groups that engage in protest missions and other aggressive anti-abortion tactics. Beginning in the mid-1980's, PLAN held annual conventions, organized in part by the defendants here, which included seminars on protest strategies. Those conventions concluded with protest missions being staged in the convention city. PLAN also sent a newsletter to its members and coordinated a hotline that potential protesters could call to get information about upcoming missions. The plaintiffs alleged, and at trial the jury found, that PLAN was an "organization or enterprise" for purposes of RICO liability.

Initially, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants' tactics violated both RICO and federal antitrust law. In 1992, however, this court issued an opinion dismissing both theories of liability, reasoning that the antitrust laws were not applicable because the plaintiffs had not alleged that the defendants exercised any form of market control over the supply of abortion services and that RICO did not reach the defendants' conduct because the plaintiffs had not shown that the alleged racketeering acts were "economically motivated." 968 F.2d at 617-30. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the limited question whether RICO requires proof that either the racketeering enterprise or the alleged predicate acts were motivated by an economic purpose. (The antitrust holding of our 1992 decision was thus left undisturbed.) The Court concluded that RICO contains no such economic motive requirement and therefore reversed our decision on that point. 510 U.S. at 256-62. Thereafter, we remanded the case to the district court for trial of the plaintiffs' RICO claims.

During the course of the seven-week trial, the plaintiffs introduced evidence of hundreds of acts committed by the defendants or others acting in concert with PLAN which, the plaintiffs contended, constituted predicate acts under RICO. The alleged predicate acts included violations of federal extortion law (the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. sec. 1951), state extortion law, the federal Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. sec. 1952, and conspiracy to violate these laws. A few of the more egregious acts the plaintiffs alleged included:

* At a protest mission in Chico, California, protesters pressed four clinic staff members up against a glass entranceway to the clinic for several hours and refused to let them go even when they complained they were being crushed. The glass wall eventually either loosened or shattered, injuring a clinic staffer.

* At a similar mission in Los Angeles, protesters grabbed at a patient's arms and legs and tried to restrain her physically from entering the clinic. The patient was actually at the clinic for a follow-up to ovarian surgery, and the attack by the protesters reopened her incisions. As a result of the attack, the patient had to be rushed to the hospital.

* In several instances, protesters entered clinics and destroyed medical equipment.

* In several cases, protesters not only blocked doorways with their bodies, but chained themselves to the doorways of clinics, or, in some cases, to operating tables inside clinics.

* In December 1985, defendant Scheidler sent letters to every abortion provider in the Chicago area calling for a "Christmas Truce." In these letters, he requested that the clinics shut down for a specific day in December, stated that he would "call to confirm" the clinic's decision, and warned that non-complying clinics would be subjected to "non- violent direct action," a catch-phrase PLAN and PLAL frequently used for their activities.

Based on this and other evidence in the voluminous record that was created at the trial, the jury found in response to special interrogatories that the defendants or others associated with PLAN committed 21 violations of the Hobbs Act, 25 violations of state extortion law, 25 acts of conspiracy to violate federal or state extortion law, four acts or threats of physical violence, 23 violations of the Travel Act, and 23 attempts to commit one of these crimes. The jury awarded damages to both clinics; once the damages were trebled, as RICO requires, the awards totaled over $163,000 to Summit Women's Health Organization and over $94,000 to Delaware Women's Health Organization.

After the jury returned its verdict, the district court held three days of additional hearings and then entered a permanent, nationwide injunction prohibiting the defendants or those acting in concert with them from interfering with the rights of the class clinics to provide abortion services, or with rights of the class women to receive those services, by obstructing access to the clinics, trespassing on clinic property, damaging or destroying clinic property, or using violence or threats of violence against the clinics, their employees and volunteers, or their patients.

II

Initially, we must consider the defendants' contention that RICO does not permit private plaintiffs to seek injunctive...