A district judge in Kentucky recently struck down a “buffer zone” ordinance outside a Louisville abortion facility allowing pro-life sidewalk counselors to counsel women entering the facility about abortion alternatives. While Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban now prevents actual abortions on-site, facility staff are still known to give women referrals for abortion elsewhere or to online distributors for the dangerous abortion pill. Without the buffer zone, sidewalk counselors can now pray and offer quiet counsel to women and girls before they enter abortion facilities in Louisville.
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The three-year legal battle pre-dates both the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and enforcement of Kentucky’s trigger ban that protects unborn life after conception. Louisville’s Ordinance O-179-21 enacted in 2021 prohibited people from “entering or obstructing a 10-foot-wide buffer zone in front of healthcare facilities.” Several pro-life groups, such as Sisters for Life and the Kentucky Right to Life Association, and other individual pro-life advocates first challenged the city ordinance in June 2021 claiming the buffer zone outside EMW Women’s Surgical Center violated First Amendment rights by limiting their ability to communicate effectively to women entering the abortion facility.
While U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings initially denied the pro-life groups’ request for an injunction, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor granting a preliminary injunction.
“Sisters for Life, several individuals, and another pro-life organization wish to offer leaflets and compassionate, if sometimes unwelcome, speech to women entering abortion clinics in Louisville, Kentucky,” wrote Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton. “But [the ordinance] limited their speaking and pamphleteering in buffer zones near the entrance of each clinic. Because these limits likely violate the First Amendment… we preliminarily enjoin them.”
The Appeals Court ruling prompted Judge Jennings in the lower court to allow the case to move forward. In her Sept. 13, 2024 ruling grating the permanent injunction, Judge Jennings noted that several other courts had struck down larger buffer zones in other states favoring more narrowly tailored zones to achieve the government’s interest in preserving facility access and safety. Even though Judge Jennings ruled the ordinance did not violate the First Amendment stating Louisville’s smaller 10-foot buffer zone still allowed for a “normal conversational distance,” she permanently struck down the ordinance because it wasn’t narrowly-tailored as applied to the EMW Women’s Surgical Center, for the facility did not have any established access safety issues.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Public sidewalks have always been protected places where people can gather to participate in the peaceful exchange of ideas. Abortion buffer zone laws collide with free speech and hinder women and girls from receiving information that could change their fateful decisions to end the life of their child. This recent decision should be an encouragement to pro-life sidewalk counselors around the country.”
