SCOTUS Declines to Take Up Abortion Videos Case
The court declined to undo a San Francisco federal judge's injunction against Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and David Daleiden, founder of the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress.
April 02, 2018 at 09:49 AM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on National Law Journal
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal in a closely watched abortion-related case coming out of the Ninth Circuit.
The high court declined to overturn an injunction against Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and David Daleiden, founder of the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. The court denied review without comment.
Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for President Donald Trump and a veteran U.S. Supreme Court advocate, represented Newman in his cert petition.
Newman and Daleiden were sued by the National Abortion Federation for publicly releasing secret recordings of the federation's annual meetings and follow-up meetings with abortion providers.
The videos, which lawyers for the abortion federation claimed were manipulated to falsely portray the providers as sellers of fetal tissue, violated confidentiality agreements that members of CMP, using false names, signed in order to have access to the meetings, according to the suit.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick III, finding the contracts enforceable and breached, issued a preliminary injunction blocking release of the videos in 2016. The court rejected arguments by Newman and Daleiden that enforcing the contracts was an unconstitutional prior restraint under the First Amendment and that CMP had an interest in disclosing criminal wrongdoing.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the trial court. The appeals panel said the district court concluded “as a matter of fact” that CMP had not found evidence of criminal wrongdoing and “that determination is amply supported by the record.”
Because of the videos, nine states opened and then closed investigations of Planned Parenthood after finding no wrongdoing; 11 other states refused to pursue investigations based on CMP's accusations, according to the NAF's high court brief opposing review.
In addition to Newman, Daleiden, represented by Catherine Wynne Short of Ojai, California, filed a separate petition for review. Marc Hearron, an appellate partner at Morrison & Foerster, represents NAF in both cases.
Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice, is a familiar face in the high court. He has argued 12 cases involving speech and religion issues such as abortion clinic buffer zones, prayers before high school football games and religious monuments in public parks. He also has filed numerous amicus briefs.
In February, Sekulow filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court supporting the Trump administration's most recent iteration of its ban on certain foreign nationals entering the United States in Trump v. Hawaii.
Sekulow was not immediately reached for comment Monday.
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