AUSTIN, TX – Another judge has struck down a law targeting crisis pregnancy centers, the pro-life alternatives to abortion facilities that offer assistance to women who choose to keep their babies or place them in adoption.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled Monday that Austin's ordinance requiring CPCs to post signs saying they do not provide abortion or contraception cannot be enforced – and ordered the city to pay the court costs of four CPCs that filed suit.
“Courts around the country have been striking these types of laws down, and this decision joins the growing list.”
“Austin City Code Chapter 10-10 [is] void for vagueness,” Yeakel ruled in Austin LifeCare v. City of Austin. He added that the statute lacked the “precision and guidance necessary to ensure that those enforcing the law on behalf of the city do not act in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner” based on whether politicians approve or disapprove of the CPCs' life-affirming message.
“This decision underscores that the pro-abortion industry may not use the law to silence their opposition; every life is valuable and the volunteers and staff of pregnancy resource centers make sacrifices daily to serve these women and babies in need,” said Stephen Casey, co-founder of the Texas Center for Defense of Life (TCDL), which filed the suit. “We should applaud their efforts. This decision provides them the continued freedom to serve.”
The City of Austin sparked the lawsuit with City Code Chapter 10-09, a motion adopted in 2010 requiring pregnancy centers to post signs, in English and Spanish, saying they do not offer abortions or birth control. Fines for non-compliance ranged from $250 to $450. The city repealed that law, but replaced it with 10-10 requiring signs to state that no medically licensed person was on staff.
Judge Yeakel ruled that the law “may deter potential clients,” who would “otherwise hear the establishments’ religious and other messages.”
TCDL filed the motion on behalf of Austin Lifecare. It was joined by Austin Pregnancy Resource Center, the Gabriel Project (operated by Catholic Charities), and the South Austin Pregnancy Resource Center, which said multiple city ordinances targeted them because city council sought to stifle their message.
“We are very pleased with today's decision,” said Jeff Mateer, general counsel for Liberty Institute, which represented the other three plaintiffs. “Our clients' First Amendment Rights to free speech and religious exercise and expression have been upheld according to well-established constitutional law, and the great work of these pregnancy resource centers to help women make informed decisions will no longer be hindered.”
Matt Bowman of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has filed similar cases nationwide, said, “The district court found Austin’s ordinance was so vague that it allowed the city dangerous latitude in punishing pro-life organizations.”
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“The court opinion … focuses on terms in the ordinance that are vague and therefore unconstitutional – but a win is a win, and we’ll take it,” TCDL Co-Founder Greg Terra added.
Terra said that the trial took place more than two years ago, in April 2012, “so we are just happy to finally have a decision.” He called Judge Yeakel's decision to award attorney's fees “icing on the cake.”
Austin City Council Member Mike Martinez, who offered the ordinance, told the Austin American-Statesman, “I think we should continue the fight so that women can receive the reproductive health care they are seeking and have full knowledge before they walk into a facility for those services.”
But pro-life lawyers say all such statutes are unconstitutional, and their days are numbered.
“Courts around the country have been striking these types of laws down, and this decision joins the growing list,” Bowman said.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow ordered Montgomery County, Maryland, to pay $375,000 in damages, attorney's fees, and court costs over a similar law targeting Centro Tepeyac Silver Spring Women's Center in the D.C. suburbs.
In March, Judge Chasanow permanently barred the county from enforcing any part of an anti-CPC law, which required Centro Tepeyac to tell women it had no licensed medical practitioner on staff, and that the county suggested consulting such personnel.
Judge Chasanow, a 1993 Bill Clinton appointee, ruled, “The county has put no evidence into the record to demonstrate that failure clearly to state that no doctors are on premises has led to any negative health outcome.”
“The critical flaw for the County is the lack of any evidence that the practices of [the pregnancy care centers] are causing pregnant women to be misinformed which is negatively affecting their health,” she added. “When core First Amendment interests are implicated, mere intuition [of a problem] is not sufficient. Yet that is all the County has brought forth: intuition and suppositions.”