WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A unanimous Supreme Court declared Feb. 28 that a federal law originally aimed at mobsters can't be used to shut down abortion-clinic protests.

The high court already ruled in 2003 that one federal anti-racketeering law cannot be used to ban protests that simply interrupt business at abortion clinics. That didn't entirely resolve the dispute, however. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later said abortion providers could use a related law to sue protestors.

But the Supreme Court Feb. 28 sided with the protesters again, apparently bringing an end to a two-decade battle over the use of anti-racketeering laws to stop clinic protests.

The complex dispute had its beginnings in the 1980s, when a series of coordinated protests by anti-abortion-rights groups such as Operation Rescue caused havoc at abortion clinics nationwide. Abortion-rights groups sued, citing the racketeering laws in saying that the anti-abortion groups had entered a criminal conspiracy to shut down abortion clinics through a combination of protests, intimidation and threats of violence.

In its 2003 ruling, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal jury's finding that the Pro-Life Action Network had violated anti-racketeering laws in 117 incidents. The justices said the protesters did not extort goods or money from the clinics.

But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reviewing the case, ruled that there were four other incidents that involved threats of violence by abortion clinic protesters rather than the interruption of commerce -- and that those threats were still punishable under federal law. The abortion protesters appealed that ruling back to the Supreme Court.

In the most recent ruling, the court said one of the laws in question, the Hobbs Act, doesn't apply to violent acts or threats associated with interstate commerce but unrelated to extortion, rendering the abortion-rights groups' complaints moot.

"We hold that physi¬cal violence unrelated to robbery or extortion falls outside the scope of the Hobbs Act," wrote Justice Stephen Breyer for a unanimous eight-member court. Newly ensconced Justice Samuel Alito, who was not on the court when the case was argued last November, did not participate in the ruling.

The court's opinion turned on a narrow reading of the statute's language, noting that the broader reading the abortion-rights groups sought would have unintended consequences.

"[R]espondents' Hobbs Act interpretation broadens the act's scope well beyond what case law has assumed," Breyer wrote. "It would federalize much ordinary criminal behavior, ranging from simple assault to murder, behavior that typically is the subject of state, not federal, prosecution."

The decision was rendered on two cases that the court combined, Scheidler v. National Organization for Women (No. 04-1244) and Operation Rescue v. National Organization for Women (No. 04-1352).

NOW said the decision endangered women's abortion rights. "Joseph Scheidler, [Operation Rescue's] Randall Terry and other leaders of the self-described 'pro-life mafia' had vowed to stop abortion 'by any means necessary,' and the ensuing attacks included arson, bombings, violent blockades, death threats and even murder," NOW president Kim Gandy said in a statement released after the ruling. "By vacating the injunction on narrow, technical grounds, the Supreme Court sided today with thugs and bullies, not peaceful protesters."

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