High court could strike Calif. disclosure law
Pregnancy centers must tell women of abortion subsidies
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court sounded ready Tuesday to strike down a California disclosure law that requires pregnancy centers, including those that are faith-based and anti-abortion, to notify women that the state offers subsidies for abortion.
A ruling striking down the law could doom similar laws in Hawaii and Illinois, and also call into question laws in other states that seek to regulate doctors’ speech.
California’s legislature adopted the disclosure rule three years ago based on concerns that more than 200 “crisis pregnancy centers” sometimes used “deceptive advertising and counseling practices that often confuse [or] misinform” pregnant women about their options. Under the law, the non-profit centers must post a prominent notice if they have “no licensed medical provider” available. Centers that are licensed must go further and notify clients that the state offers “free or lowcost” contraception, prenatal care and abortion.
The state’s lawyers defended the law on the grounds that warnings and disclosures are routine for hospitals, doctors and prescription drugs. They noted that the Supreme Court in the past has upheld the principle of “informed consent,” including in abortion cases. But during Tuesday’s argument, most of the justices took sharp issue with all or parts of the California law. They said it was unfairly targeted at the faithbased centers. Doctors and for-profit clinics were exempted from the law.
“If it has been gerrymandered,
The most restrictive abortion law in the country was in effect less than 24 hours before a federal judge temporarily blocked it Tuesday during what could become a long legal fight between Mississippi’s Republican governor and the state’s only abortion clinic.
Gov. Phil Bryant on Monday signed a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves heard arguments Tuesday before granting the clinic’s immediate request for a temporary restraining order. that’s a serious issue,” said Justice Elena Kagan. Agreeing, Justice Samuel Alito said the law “has a lot of crazy exceptions. … What you’re left with is a very strange pattern, and, gee, it turns out just about the only clinics that are covered by this are pro-life clinics.”
Others said it violated the First Amendment by requiring these private clinics put out the state’s message. Justice Anthony Kennedy described the required notice as “mandating speech” that “alters the content of the message.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed the state would want people to have “full information about their options,” but why put the burden on these centers? The state has “other means to provide messages . ... It’s pretty unusual to force a private speaker to do that for you under the First Amendment,” he said.
Still others voiced concern over the advertising burden put on small, nonprofit centers. Michael Farris, a lawyer for the centers, said advertisements, including billboards, would have to include disclosures in large print and in 13 languages.
By the hour’s end, it appeared the justices will vote to strike down all or at least most of the law’s mandatory disclosure provisions. Tuesday’s case marked the third time in recent months that the justices weighed a conservative group’s claim that a liberal state law amounts to unconstitutional “compelled speech.”
The justices will rule in the case, NIFLA v. Becerra, by late June.