Scheidler v NOW III – The Supreme Court Rules – Unanimously! – That NOW’s
Marathon “RICO” Lawsuit (A Twenty Year Onslaught of False Claims) Must Finally
Come to an End!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2006
Contact: Tom Brejcha, Esq.
Today,
attorneys for Joseph Scheidler, Andrew Scholberg, Timothy Murphy, and the
Pro-Life Action League – four of the five remaining defendants – hailed the U.S.
Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Scheidler v. NOW, reversing
the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago for the second time in three years,
directing (after 19 ¾ years of nationwide class action litigation) the “entry of
judgment for petitioners” (i.e., for all pro-life defendants, including
Operation Rescue).
Tom
Brejcha, lead defense counsel since 1986 and president and chief counsel at the
Chicago-based Thomas More Society, Pro-Life Law Center, a public interest law
firm, lauded the decision, authored by Justice Breyer, as “total vindication”
for both his clients and for all other peaceful pro-life protesters.
Indeed, Brejcha’s co-counsel Alan Untereiner (partner in Robbins, Russell, et
al, in Washington, D.C., who argued the latest high Court appeal on November 30th)
observed that today’s decision marked the definitive rejection of only the
latest in a series of false and meritless claims advanced by the plaintiffs
throughout this mega-scaled, epic struggle – a nationwide class action suit
which pitted virtually all of the nation’s abortion providers and NOW, one of
the principal abortion advocacy groups, against pro-life protest leaders and, as
NOW put it, “up to a million ... co-conspirators.”
In prior
appeals to the high Court, protesters had defeated claims that they (a)
“conspired to restrain trade” in violation of antitrust laws by trying
(peaceably) to “shut down” providers, and (b) “extorted” abortionists’ business
by a “pattern” of peaceable sit-ins (civil disobedience), thereby qualifying as
“racketeers” under federal RICO law. In this latest appeal, the protesters
rebuffed a last-ditch claim – born of desperation! – that they still
could be saddled with a federal racketeering (RICO) injunction on account of
four unidentified “violent” acts by some unknown perpetrators,
somehow “associated” with them. These acts supposedly were
“overlooked” when the Justices had ruled, 8-1, three years ago that “all
of the predicate acts supporting the jury’s finding of a RICO violation must
be reversed,” and the RICO judgment “must also be reversed.”
Justice
Breyer wrote for the Court that the abortion plaintiffs’ latest claim depended
on a serious misreading of the scope of the federal Hobbs Act – inventing a new
‘freestanding’ federal crime that made a federal case out of minor crimes
unconnected to extortion or robbery, if they merely “affected commerce ... in
any way or degree.” Defense counsel Brejcha added, “The lower court ruling
imperiled labor unions and social protesters of all stripes. If the abortion
side had prevailed here, anybody organizing protests against businesses or
property owners would have been exposed to financially ruinous RICO suits.
This is good reason why our appeal drew such bipartisan support, not only from
all the Justices on the Supreme Court, but also from a host of amici curiae
including the AFL-CIO, as well as anti-war, anti-death penalty, civil rights,
animal rights, and environmental groups. Now the case will be over, once
and for all!”
Priests for Life Press Release
Fr.
Frank's comments
Supreme Court Syllabus of the Scheidler Case (PDF Format)
Justice
Breyer Opinion on the
Scheidler Case
(PDF Format)
