Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 17, 1995 TAG: 9510170083
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The court, without comment, turned away arguments that the city ordinance used to prosecute the anti-abortion pickets unlawfully violates their free-speech rights.
In early 1993, the San Jose City Council prohibited ``targeted residential picketing.'' The ordinance bars anyone from picketing within 300 feet of a targeted home.
Thirteen pickets, carrying signs that made clear who was the subject of their protest, were arrested July 10, 1993, for walking through the San Jose neighborhood where an abortion doctor lives.
Five days later, three additional pickets were arrested for carrying signs across the street from the doctor's home.
No trial has been held for the 16 arrested pickets.
They challenged the ordinance as unconstitutional, and a state judge threw the ordinance out as overbroad.
A state appeals court, however, reversed the judge's ruling and said the ordinance is a valid time, place or manner regulation of speech narrowly tailored to protect residential privacy.
The California Supreme Court refused to hear the pickets' appeal in May.
The 16 pickets' appeal relied heavily on a 1988 decision in which the nation's highest court said communities may not ban pickets from marching through residential neighborhoods.
The court in that ruling said communities can ban picketing aimed specifically at someone's home if the picketing takes place solely in front of that home.
In the appeal acted on Monday, the arrested pickets argued that the San Jose ordinance ``is designed to dilute the impact of the picket itself, by making it unlikely that the object of the picket will even know he or she is being picketed, unless he or she happens to come out of the home and look down the street, or possibly around a corner.''
Lawyers for the city urged the justices to reject the appeal, and defended ``the reasonableness of the legislative choice to use a 300-foot buffer zone.''
The case is Thompson vs. San Jose, 95-342.
by CNB