Lawson v. Murray
Headline: High court declines to review New Jersey ruling that limited antiabortion residential picketing, leaving a 300-foot injunction in place and restricting protesters near a doctor’s home.
Holding: The Court refused to review and left in place a New Jersey injunction that bars antiabortion residential picketing within 300 feet of a doctor’s home, so the state court’s restrictions remain effective.
- Leaves a 300-foot ban on residential picketing near the doctor’s home in effect.
- Creates risk that judges can bar peaceful protests using a vague 'public policy'.
- Leaves Madsen’s scope unresolved, so national rules remain unclear.
Summary
Background
Respondents are an obstetrician-gynecologist who performs abortions and his wife. Two antiabortion demonstrators and about 56 other picketers marched peacefully, in single file, on the sidewalk past the respondents’ house for about an hour, with no reported trespass or violence. The state trial court then issued a broad court order (an injunction) keeping protesters at least 300 feet from the home. The New Jersey appellate courts affirmed that order, and the United States Supreme Court ultimately denied review of the state-court ruling.
Reasoning
Justice Scalia’s concurrence explains the core legal concern: a court order that forbids peaceful, lawful picketing before any law was broken is a prior restraint (a court order that stops speech before it happens) and is especially dangerous for free speech. He argues injunctions should normally be remedies for actual or imminent unlawful conduct, not tools to enforce a vague state “public policy” against certain speech. He criticizes the New Jersey courts for upholding an injunction without finding a violation of law and warns that relying on general equitable power risks suppressing controversial speech.
Real world impact
Because the Supreme Court declined review, the state injunction restricting residential picketing remains in effect for the doctor’s home in this case. The concurrence warns the decision could encourage judges to use broad “public policy” grounds to limit peaceful protests in other places. Scalia declined to vote to hear the case further largely because an alternative legal theory called the “captive audience” claim could avoid resolving the bigger prior-restraint question.
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