Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo, Inc. v. Williams

• Decision Date: 26 May 1994
• Docket Number: INC,SHASTA-DIABL,No. S031721,S031721
• Citation: 7 Cal.4th 860,30 Cal.Rptr.2d 629
• Parties: , 873 P.2d 1224 PLANNED PARENTHOOD, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Christine WILLIAMS et al., Defendants and Appellants.
• Court: California Supreme Court

Page 629

30 Cal.Rptr.2d 629

7 Cal.4th 860, 873 P.2d 1224

PLANNED PARENTHOOD SHASTA-DIABLO, INC., Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Christine WILLIAMS et al., Defendants and Appellants.

No. S031721.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

May 26, 1994.

Certiorari Granted Oct. 31, 1994.

See 115 S.Ct. 413.

[7 Cal.4th 864] [873 P.2d 1225] John R. Streett, Novato, for defendants and appellants.

James Joseph Lynch, Jr., Sacramento, Jay Alan Sekulow, Virginia Beach, VA, Walter M. Weber, Thomas P. Monaghan, New Hope, KY, Christopher R. Inama, San Carlos, and Craig Peter T.S. Cornell, Rolling Hills Estate, as amici curiae on behalf of defendants and appellants.

McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, Maria P. Rivera, Geoffrey L. Robinson, Grant Guerra and Stephen Kostka, Walnut Creek, for plaintiff and respondent.

Catherine I. Hanson, Alice P. Mead, San Francisco, Celeste Lacy Davis, New York City, Morrison & Foerster, James J. Garrett, Gregory P. Dresser, Walnut Creek, Elizabeth Bader, Jill Schlictmann, San Francisco, Melanie Wyne, Oakland, and Elizabeth Dahl, San Francisco, as amici curiae on behalf of plaintiff and respondent.

ARABIAN, Justice.

We are confronted in this matter with a collision between competing constitutional interests involving a subject of exceptional public concern. The precise question is whether, in granting and upholding a permanent injunction against anti-abortion protesters, the trial court and Court of Appeal properly balanced the free speech and assembly rights of the protesters, against the health and safety interests of women attempting to obtain medical services, including clinical abortions, in a private medical facility. We conclude that the injunction, as modified by the Court of Appeal, is constitutional and therefore shall affirm the judgment.

I. FACTS

Viewed independently to determine whether the evidence supports the judgment (Bose Co. v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc. (1984) 466 U.S. 485, 498-511, 104 S.Ct. 1949, 1958-1965, 80 L.Ed.2d 502), the record discloses the following: ¹

Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit corporation operating a family planning clinic in Vallejo. The clinic provides a range of family planning, health and counseling services, including abortions. Located in a one-story building that it shares with another commercial tenant, a tax service, the clinic adjoins a parking lot located on one side and to the rear of the building. There is a concrete yard for additional parking immediately in the front, and a narrow public sidewalk between the yard and the street. The sidewalk is punctuated by two driveway entrances.

Solano Citizens For Life, under the direction of Christine Williams (hereafter petitioners), is an organization opposed to abortion. Beginning in March 1990, petitioners and others began gathering at the clinic, primarily on Thursdays when abortions were performed, to demonstrate against abortion. Although their numbers varied, there were usually six to eight demonstrators at any given time, and occasionally as many as one hundred. The protesters frequently brought their children as well, ranging in age from infants to teens.

Petitioners picketed on the sidewalk in front of the clinic as well as in the parking lot, carrying signs condemning abortion. One of the tactics of the sidewalk picketers was to walk slowly across the driveway entrance, thereby delaying cars attempting to turn into the lot. As the cars drove in, the protesters would approach and surround the car, attempting to pass literature through the windows even as they were being rolled up. Others pursued patients walking from their cars to the clinic entrance, as well as along the sidewalk and across the street to the bus stop, offering "sidewalk counseling." "Counseling" consisted of pressing anti-abortion literature and plastic replicas of fetuses on patients attempting to enter the clinic and exhorting them to reconsider their decision to have an abortion. Petitioners also stationed several "counselors" directly outside of the clinic entrance for the same purpose.

The anti-abortion protesters also targeted clinic staff, on at least one occasion calling a clinic nurse a "murderess" and admonishing her not to "kill" babies. They also photographed clinic staff and patients and recorded the license numbers of cars entering the lot.

Petitioners' activities created emotional distress and anxiety in the clinic's patients. As a result the clinic began to utilize volunteer escorts to accompany patients entering and leaving the building. In one instance the escorts dispersed a group of protesters encircling an emotionally distraught patient on the sidewalk.

II. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In August 1990, Planned Parenthood filed the instant action for a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunction. The trial court issued a temporary restraining order that enjoined petitioners from harassing any person entering or leaving the clinic and restricted their picketing to the sidewalk in front of the building. After a subsequent hearing, the trial court granted a preliminary injunction restricting to four the number of pickets that petitioners could maintain on the sidewalk in front of the clinic, and requiring that at least two of the pickets remain a minimum of ten feet from the other two.

Trial on the complaint for a permanent injunction was held in April 1991. Witnesses for both the clinic and petitioners described the protest activities at the clinic and their impact on patients and staff. There was also testimony that police enforcement of the terms of the preliminary injunction had been necessary. ²

Following trial, the court made findings that petitioners had: (1) confronted and intimidated women seeking the clinic's services and forced plastic replicas of fetuses and "counseling" upon the clinic's staff and clients; (2) interfered with or obstructed entrance to and exit from the clinic; (3) pursued patients to their cars or public transportation to distribute literature and plastic fetuses; and (4) caused some of the women seeking counseling or services to become emotionally distraught. ³

Based on these findings, the trial court granted a permanent injunction against petitioners, enjoining them from: (1) blocking any entrance or exit to the clinic building; (2) recording the license numbers of cars entering or leaving the clinic; (3) photographing any person entering or leaving the clinic building; (4) referring, in oral statements while at the clinic site, to physicians, staff or clients as "murdering" or "murderers," "killing" or "killers," or to children or babies being "killed" or "murdered" by anyone in the clinic building in the presence of children under 12; and (5) shouting at or touching physicians, staff or patients entering or leaving the clinic or making noise that could be heard inside the premises. In addition, the injunction restricted all picketing, demonstrating On appeal, petitioners challenged those provisions of the injunction that: (1) restricted the content of their speech by preventing them from using specific language in front of children while at the protest site; (2) excluded them from the clinic parking lot; and (3) excluded them from the public sidewalk in front of the clinic building. The Court of Appeal invalidated the content restriction on petitioners' speech, finding that it was not justified by any compelling interest apparent from the record. The Court of Appeal upheld the parking lot exclusion, however, ruling that the clinic was not the functional equivalent of a public forum under Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center (1979) 23 Cal.3d 899, 153 Cal.Rptr. 854, 592 P.2d 341, and that petitioners were not, therefore, entitled to exercise their free speech rights on clinic property. The court also sustained the sidewalk restriction, concluding that it served a substantial governmental interest in safeguarding a woman's right to procreative choice under article I, section 1, of the California Constitution, and was narrowly tailored to serve that interest. ⁴

[873 P.2d 1228] or counseling to the public sidewalk across the street from the clinic building.

Petitioners sought review solely on the issue of the sidewalk exclusion. We granted the petition to consider that aspect of the injunction.

III. DISCUSSION

We recognize at the outset the intense moral, religious and political concerns associated with the underlying subject matter of this lawsuit. We are constrained, however, to focus on the legal issue presented. The sole legal question, as noted, is whether the injunction provision that effectively bars petitioners from the public sidewalk in front of the clinic by requiring that all picketing, demonstrating or counseling take place on the public sidewalk directly across the street, violates petitioners' First Amendment rights. To answer this question we apply a familiar framework of analysis.

A. Regulation of Speech in a Public Forum

The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble...." (U.S. Const., 1st Amend.) These rights are safeguarded against state interference by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (De Jonge v. Oregon (1937) 299 U.S. 353, 364, 57 S.Ct. 255, 259, 81 L.Ed. 278.) Furthermore, it is settled that when, as here, the judicial process is invoked to restrict expressive activities on public property, "state action" is implicated entitling the aggrieved party to the protection of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. (A.F. of L. v. Swing (1941) 312 U.S. 321, 61 S.Ct. 568, 85 L.Ed. 855; Bakery Drivers Local v. Wohl (1942) 315 U.S. 769, 62 S.Ct. 816, 86 L.Ed. 1178; Hudgens v. NLRB (1976) 424 U.S. 507, 519-521, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 1036-1037, 47 L.Ed.2d 196; Feminist Women's Health Center v. Blythe (1993) 17 Cal.App.4th 1543, 1561, 22 Cal.Rptr.2d 184; Bering v. Share (1986) 106 Wash.2d 212, 721 P.2d 918, 925;...