New York, NY - June 27, 2014 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued the following statement in response to today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley:
“While we are pleased that the Supreme Court has reaffirmed that states may protect their strong interest in ensuring that citizens have full and safe access to necessary reproductive health care services, we are disappointed that the Court rejected the particular approach adopted by Massachusetts. New York’s clinic protection laws are not implicated by today’s decision, but my office remains committed to supporting the ability of a state to provide other kinds of protection as required by its own experience.”
Background
Massachusetts’s Reproductive Health Care Facilities Act creates a protective buffer zone within 35 feet of the entrances of designated reproductive health facilities. In today’s decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Massachusetts Act serves a significant governmental interest in a content neutral way, but burdens more speech than is necessary to achieve the Act’s purposes.
Attorney General Schneiderman led a coalition of thirteen states and the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands in filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case. The brief argued that states require latitude to craft appropriate responses to the unique factual circumstances their citizens face, and that the Massachusetts law was a reasonable restriction on the time, place and manner of speech. In addition to New York, the states joining in the filing with the Supreme Court were California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
New York’s amicus brief was prepared by New York Solicitor General Barbara D. Underwood, Deputy Solicitor General Andrea Oser and Assistant Solicitor General Zainab A. Chaudhry, with assistance from the Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau.
A copy of today’s brief can be viewed here.