Justice Clarence Thomas issued a forceful dissent on Monday after the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging First Amendment restrictions for protesters outside abortion clinics.
Thomas, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, criticized the Supreme Court’s refusal to revisit Hill v. Colorado (2000), a precedent that upheld so-called free speech “buffer zones” around clinics, calling the decision a failure to resolve long-standing confusion among lower courts.
“The Court today declines an invitation to set the record straight on Hill’s defunct status,” Thomas wrote, emphasizing that the ruling had “contradicted more than a half-century of well-established First Amendment principles.” He argued that despite being effectively undermined by recent cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), lower courts still feel compelled to uphold Hill due to the Supreme Court’s inaction.
The case in question on Monday, Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale, originated in Carbondale, Illinois, where local officials enacted a law that barred protesters from approaching within eight feet of individuals near abortion clinics without consent. The ordinance, modeled directly after the Colorado statute upheld in Hill, was repealed in 2024, but Coalition Life, a Missouri-based pro-life group, continued its lawsuit, seeking to strike down similar laws nationwide.
Thomas contended that the Carbondale ordinance and others like it impose content-based restrictions on speech, which should be subjected to the highest level of judicial scrutiny. He criticized the original Hill ruling for distorting First Amendment protections, arguing that “buffer zones like the one at issue are obviously and undeniably content-based.”
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Although Carbondale repealed the ordinance in the summer of 2024, Thomas said this was “not fatal to petitioner’s claims,” noting that the ordinance was in effect for over a year and a half, and Coalition Life sought nominal damages for the infringement of First Amendment rights.
Justice Samuel Alito, an appointee of George W. Bush, said he supported granting the petition to hear the Coalition Life case.
While the Supreme Court’s refusal leaves lower court rulings in place, Thomas warned that the confusion surrounding Hill would persist. “We are responsible for the confusion among the lower courts,” he concluded. “And it is our job to fix it.”