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Americans United for Life urges the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Hill v. Colorado.

Americans United for Life filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court Monday in support of the petitioner in Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, Illinois. The petitioner, Coalition Life, is an organization founded in 2011 that provides pregnancy resources, prayer volunteers, and sidewalk counselors with locations in Kansas and Illinois. The City of Carbondale, encouraged by the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2000 case Hill v. Colorado, enacted a law in January 2023 that created a floating 8-foot bubble zone around a woman who is within 100 feet of an abortion facility. In effect, this ordinance prevents sidewalk counselors from counseling mothers on public streets about life-affirming options. 

The brief explains that Americans possess a constitutional right under the First Amendment to advocate in a public forum on the alternatives to abortion, to counsel mothers considering abortion for their child, and to witness to the humanity of preborn persons. AUL’s brief in Coalition Life clarifies that Hill conflicts with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Sidewalk counselors provide last-minute, life-saving support and education to mothers seeking abortion. In 2000, Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said in his Hill dissent that because of the wrongly decided case, “‘Uninhibited, robust, and wide open’ debate is replaced by the power of the state to protect an unheard-of ‘right to be let alone’ on the public streets.” A generation later, the majority opinion in Dobbs cited Hill as one of many abortion cases taken up by the Court that has “distorted First Amendment doctrines.” 

“As Roe made it difficult to enact any legislation protecting women and preborn children,” said Litigation Counsel Carolyn McDonnell, “it also interfered with the democratic process and created an abortion distortion that warped other legal doctrines. The Supreme Court should overturn the wrongly decided Hill case to restore the right of all Americans to engage in public discourse about alternatives to abortion.” 

Access the full amicus brief here.

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