Anti-abortion protesters score victory in lawsuit against city of Minneapolis

Anti-abortion advocates recently scored a victory against the city of Minneapolis over an ordinance banning them from blocking entrances and driveways to clinics.

The city agreed to settle a lawsuit challenging a 2022 ordinance limiting access to abortion clinics by amending the law and agreeing to pay the anti-abortion group’s estimated $600,000 in legal fees.

In November 2022, the City Council unanimously voted to ban people from obstructing access to abortion clinic entrances or driveways. The Planned Parenthood Health Center in Uptown supported the ordinance after an uptick in protest following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a federal right to abortion for nearly a half-century.

Pro-Life Action Ministries, which has conducted sit-ins, protests and “sidewalk ministry” at Planned Parenthood clinics since the 1980s, sued the city in April 2023. The group claimed the ordinance violated its First Amendment right to “counsel” people on public sidewalks.

Mayor Jacob Frey signed the ordinance with some fanfare in 2022 — flanked by council members celebrating its passage. Frey said the law wasn’t about limiting free speech but “protecting community members from being physically disrupted while seeking the reproductive care they need and deserve.”

The council’s decision to walk back the ordinance was done quietly at the end of a long council meeting: On Dec. 5, after discussing the lawsuit in a closed session, the council emerged and voted 9-0 to fast-track an amendment to the ordinance adding exceptions for “conduct protected by law.”

Council Vice President Aisha Chughtai briefly explained the action during the meeting, saying, “The ordinance before you today is consistent and in line with both federal and state Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Acts.”

She added that the council wanted “to ensure access to comprehensive health care, which includes abortion, and we stand unanimous in our support for Planned Parenthood, and we feel this ordinance provides those protections.

“We also want to be sure to provide very specific carve-outs to ensure First Amendment rights are protected and ensure our local authority remains intact.”

With that, the meeting ended. Asked for more information about what the council did, a city spokesperson replied 10 days later with virtually the same statement Chughtai read at the meeting.

Pro-Life Action Ministries was represented by the Thomas More Society, a conservative public interest law firm. Peter Breen, the society’s executive vice president, said in a news release that the city “thought it could get away with targeting pro-life speech by creating an unconstitutional, content-based, no-speech zone — crafted exclusively for the purpose of hamstringing pro-life sidewalk counseling efforts outside of the city’s Planned Parenthood abortion facility.”