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PORTLAND, ME, October 22, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – The city of Portland, Maine, must pay pro-life sidewalk counselors and their attorneys tens of thousands of dollars for violating their First Amendment rights.

The city settled a lawsuit in federal court this month that said the city's 39-foot bubble zone law – which did not apply to Planned Parenthood employees – silenced one side of the abortion debate.

Under the terms of the settlement, the city must pay each sidewalk counselor one dollar each, and $56,500 in legal fees to their attorneys, according to the Portland Press Herald.

Portland city council passed the speech-suppressing law in November 2013 after being lobbied by Planned Parenthood.

“The city of Portland enacted its ordinance because it didn’t like the message pro-lifers were communicating outside of the city’s Planned Parenthood abortion clinic. There was never any legitimate reason for banning peaceful, law-abiding citizens from using the entire public sidewalk surrounding the downtown building that houses Planned Parenthood,” said one of their attorneys, Erin Kuenzig of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Local sidewalk counselors Daniel and Marguerite Fitzgerald, their teenage children, and Leslie Sneddon sued the city, saying the ordinance did not allow them to speak with women who approached the facility in hopes of offering support for them to carry their children to term.

In the midst of their legal proceedings, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down Massachusetts' 35-foot bubble zone law last June in its McCullen v. Coakley decision. The justices wrote that counselors like the Fitzgeralds engage in caring, consensual conversations” with mothers in the hopes of offering them an alternative to abortion.

Like many cities around the country, Portland had to repeal its local – and more restrictive – bubble zone law, at the first council meeting after the decision. But city officials tried to have the case dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, dismissed only part of the lawsuit. Torresen, the first female federal district judge in Maine, approved the settlement on October 8.

“Hopefully, this judgment will deter the city from trampling the constitutional rights of its citizens in the future,” Kuenzig said.