Federal court blocks enforcement of Santa Barbara clinic protection ordinance.

On March 13, Judge Richard Gadbois of the US District Court for the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction against a Santa Barbara ordinance limiting protests outside medical facilities and places of worship. Passed by the city council in May 1993, the measure prohibits "demonstration activity" in "or within eight (8) feet of the driveway" and bars anyone from obstructing access by refusing to stay eight feet away at the request of a person within 100 feet of the facility. Judge Gadbois recognized that the Santa Barbara council was not "motivated by hostility to the anti-abortion viewpoint." Nonetheless, the court found that the provisions were broader than necessary to protect access to the facilities. Specifically, Judge Gadbois held that the driveway provision impermissibly prohibited expressive activity even when access was not impeded. Further, the court found that the provision allowing a person to ask a protestor to withdraw wrongly conditioned the right to engage in protected expression on a listener's subjective reaction. Judge Gadbois likened the latter provision to a part of an injunction that barred approaches without consent within a 300-foot radius of a clinic in Melbourne, Florida, which the US Supreme Court struck down in Madsen v. Women's Health Center. Plaintiffs in Edwards v. City of Santa Barbara--anti-choice "sidewalk counselors" Vickie Edwards and Kathleen Rose McCaulley--filed suit in April 1994.