The precious right to defraud
And this ruling sucks too: no truth in advertising for you.
The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a lower court decision upholding a California law requiring anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to more fully disclose what they are.
The case pitted the right to know against the right of free speech. On one side are self-identified “crisis pregnancy centers” that seek to prevent abortions and on the other side is the state of California, which enacted a 2015 law to ensure that these centers do not intentionally or unintentionally mislead the women who walk through their doors.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court said the centers are likely to succeed in their claim that the law violates the First Amendment. That overturns an earlier decision by the Ninth Circuit upholding the law and sends the case back for further consideration.
In other words it’s “free speech” for anti-abortion centers to pretend to be “crisis pregnancy centers” in order to lure women in and talk them out of having abortions.
Supporters of the California law called the state’s effort nothing more than seeking “truth in advertising.” But anti-abortion pregnancy centers saw the law as unconstitutional, compelling speech that turns them into mouthpieces for a government message they disagree with.
…
The case began in 2015 when California passed a law known as the Reproductive FACT Act. (It stands for Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care and Transparency.)
The impetus was twofold — first, allegations that pregnancy centers opposed to abortion were using deceptive practices; and second, concern that lower-income women, in particular, weren’t aware of the free pregnancy-related services California provides, from prenatal and delivery care to birth control and abortion.
The FACT Act requires unlicensed crisis pregnancy centers to post a sign or otherwise disclose to their clients in writing that the center is not a licensed medical facility and has no licensed medical provider who supervises the provision of services. The disclosure requirement extends to advertising, which anti-abortion pregnancy centers objected to as an attempt to “drown out” their message.
They want to be free to trick and deceive.
In recent years, the number of pregnancy centers that counsel against abortion has dramatically increased. There are about 2,700 of them across the country, more than three times the number of clinics that provide abortions.
And just as some states provide taxpayer funds for abortions, 14 states directly fund anti-abortion pregnancy centers. From 2001 to 2006, the centers received an estimated $30 million in federal funding.
There is no data on how many of the 2,700 anti-abortion pregnancy centers are unlicensed. But unlicensed clinics offer pregnancy tests and limited ultrasounds, and, to an unskeptical eye, they can look very much like a licensed medical facility.
The personnel wear surgical scrubs or white coats and ask clients to fill out medical history questionnaires. Indeed, many clinics locate next to or across the street from a full-service women’s reproductive health center and some use similar-sounding names.
In order to trick and deceive.
“and sends the case back for further consideration“
So is the case going to come back up before the Supreme Court again?
Anna,
Probably not.
Pretty much every Supreme Court opinion that reverses a lower court ends with “we reverse, vacate the judgment below, and remand this case to the [court from which we got it] for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” or words to that effect. You shouldn’t read anything in particular into that. It really just means that SCOTUS has accomplished what it set out to do — usually, to announce/clarify/change the legal rule that applies to this type of situation — and now the lower courts can handle anything that is left.
In this case, plaintiffs had asked for a preliminary injunction against the law, which the district court and 9th Circuit Court of Appeal denied. Skimming the opinion, I’m not even sure that the majority opinion specifically states that a preliminary injunction should be entered, although that’s the clear implication and perhaps I missed something. But it will be up to the district court to determine, based on the guidance in this opinion, the precise wording of the injunction. And because it is just a preliminary injunction, there could still end up being a trial on the merits and a decision about whether or not to grant a permanent injunction.
It’s conceivable that California could manage to persuade the lower court that it can meet the tougher standard of justifying this law and thereby prevail at trial. And that could lead to subsequent appeals and possibly another trip to the Supreme Court. It’s fairly rare, though. (I seem to recall the 9th Circuit and an increasingly irritated SCOTUS playing ping-pong with a criminal case once.)
I think it’s about time real America starts exploring nullification…
IANAL but this ruling seems insane to me. Let’s say I’m a homeopath pretend to be an oncologist (being careful not to state that I have an MD or am licensed to practice in my state but set things up so it looks legit). I have a deeply held religious belief that says cutting into people lets out their soul. So, anyone who comes to me for cancer treatment, I could legitimately lie to them and not have to tell them I am not a licensed medical practitioner? And if they ask about surgery to remove their tumor, I could try and convince them that treatment option won’t work and try my magic sugar pills instead? Surely not?
Free speech is a good thing but I really don’t see how forcing someone to admit they don’t have a license to do something they are pretending they can do is a violation of the 1st amendment. What about the client’s rights to make informed consent to medical treatment?
Plus there are laws against fraud. I don’t get it either.
Claire’s hypothetical is only slightly hypothetical.
This is really a poorly reasoned opinion. It only makes a half-assed attempt to distinguish the holding in Planned Parenthood v Casey that the state can require doctors to provide certain information to patients seeking an abortion. Breyer’s dissent is pretty much on point as far as I can see.
And for extra vomitousness, read Kennedy’s concurrence. He decided to write a separate opinion just to deliver a pious little lecture to the California legislature about the Founding Fathers and how preventing pro-lifers from lying to women is totalitarianism or something. It is so frustrating that so many of our rights hinge on whether something offends Kennedy’s personal moral compass or not.
Claire @4
Agreed, the deceptive practice is widespread, for example the site, ” The Australian Vaccination Network ” was, in fact, a front for a notorious anti-vax loony.
Well, lets face it, SCOTUS wsa the one branch of your Government that had been maintaining some (grudging) respect. However, it’s now openly descended (been thrown) into the tribal political warfare that the other branches of your Government have been mired in for decades. While I have respect for some members of SCOTUS, it’s pretty hard to maintain respect for a body as a whole that provides a series of judgements that esentially say:
– Corporations are people
– Money is speech
– Gerrymandering is acceptable
– Gerrymandering based openly on racism is ok
– Presidential power is essentially unfettered and we shouldn’t examine the Presidents record of speech to determine if they act with animus.
You could nitpick with majority and minority decisions on many other cases, but that right there is the highest court of the land siding with one specific faction of the oligarchy who are leading a substantial plurality of the population around by their noses.
I think history will judge the refusal of a Republican Senate to grant Obama’s nominee even a hearing, essentially gerrymandering SCOTUS, very harshly. The resulting appointment of the grossly under qualified and increasingly aggressive Gorsuch as a a Justice has removed a big chunk of SCOTUS legitimacy. He’s going to be a millstone around your necks for 30-40 years potentially. A man who thinks both gerrymandering and doing so on the basis of race is acceptable…
@Rob Yup. Just like that asshole Clarence Thomas. Holding a seat for life sounds great when we’re talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Thurgood Marshall but not so good when these assclowns get put on the bench.
And the worst of it is, fucking Mitch McConnell won’t pay for the damage he’s done to the Senate, to SCOTUS, to democracy and to the rule of law. Sometimes I wish I believed in Hell, just so I could imagine McConnell doing the fiery lambada.
You’re presuming 2 things. 1) History will survive into posterity. 2) Historians will be allowed to operate with integrity and honesty, and not become subject to the whims of the electorate and/or the Republican Party.
Right now, I can’t with confidence endorse either of those possibilities without a lot of waffling. I hope both happen…
@11, I was feeling that grim yesterday.
My main consolation for you, such as it is, is that history can turn a large and slow wheel. Eventually enough distance and independence is gained for a relatively impartial view to be gained.
The protestors at the clinic I volunteer at use this sort of deception regularly (or at least attempt to). They offer ultrasounds and unspecified ‘help’, but their facility has not a single doctor (nor, I believe, even an RN) on staff. Furthermore, they routinely shout out medical ‘advice’ that is, at best, one step removed from homeopathy. The biggest one is to tell women that if they’ve started the medical abortion process (ie, taken the first drug), they can still go back and tell them to google ‘abortion reversal’ or somesuch. Needless to say, there’s not a single medical study out there of the risks of attempting to put the brakes on a medical abortion once begun; if I had to guess, I’d suspect there’s a huge chance of miscarrying anyway, or premature birth, or severe birth defects, or major complications that could prove dangerous to the mother (not that those shits give two flying fucks about that).
That’s known as lying for Jesus. It has a long history.
iknklast:
You seem to be presuming that the other 96% of the world’s population has no historians.
Not really, tigger. I’m sure the rest of the world does, and that most of them (probably 98%) are competent, capable historians. But I’m not confident that they will survive into posterity, either, and not necessarily because of the growing conservatism worldwide. As an environmental scientist, I have been seeing a lot of things lately that aren’t promising, and if the world goes into crisis management mode to dole out the resources, I have very little confidence that historians will be those receiving priority for survival. In fact, they will probably be on the second bus to destruction (right after the first bus containing artists – the second bus will be for philosophers and historians).