NOW Claims Another Court Victory Against Abortion Opponent Joe Scheidler

May 31, 2002

"We've won in court yet again against Joe Scheidler of the Pro Life Action League," said National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy. "The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, has dismissed Scheidler's hypocritical defamation lawsuit against NOW."

"Scheidler and his allies are always claiming free speech protection for their acts and threats of violence against abortion providers and clinic patients. Then as soon as someone points out the truth, they run whining into court, crying slander. Scheidler's first defamation lawsuit against us was dismissed by a federal court several years ago and now the second one has been dismissed as well.

Neal Horsley of Nuremberg Files infamy also ran to court to stop public statements by NOW, Planned Parenthood, and even Geraldo Rivera, about his actions all the while demanding First Amendment protection for his violence-threatening website," Gandy said. "None of Horsley's claims held water in court either."

"Scheidler's defamation lawsuits are an abuse of the courts, and appear to be retaliation for NOW v. Scheidler, our landmark lawsuit in which a unanimous jury declared him guilty of racketeering and NOW won the first-ever nationwide injunction against antiabortion extremists," Gandy said. "This week another court ruled in favor of NOW and against Scheidler. That's no coincidence, because we've got the law and justice on our side. It seems the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement still doesn't get the point of the First Amendment free speech is a First Amendment right, violence is not."

Background on NOW v. Scheidler

NOW v. Scheidler was filed in 1985 to stop anti-abortion mobsters from denying women access to reproductive health services. Scheidler himself nicknamed his group, the Pro-Life Action Network, the "pro-life mafia," and said their aim is to stop abortion "by any means necessary." The actions of their enterprise included physical attacks on patients which resulted in serious injuries. The Supreme Court heard the case in 1993, and held that Scheidler, Operation Rescue and the other defendants are not exempt from RICO laws, even though they claimed religious, not monetary, motives for their acts . In 1998 a unanimous jury found Scheidler and his co-defendants to be racketeers under RICO, the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. In 2001, the Seventh Circuit unanimously affirmed the jury's finding that the defendants had violated RICO by committing crimes against the class of plaintiff clinics as well as the class of women represented by NOW. The trial judge issued a nationwide injunction against future acts of violence, and that injunction was affirmed by the Seventh Circuit. The Supreme Court declined to consider Scheidler's claim of First Amendment protection, thus upholding the Seventh Circuit, but agreed to consider his appeal on two other legal points.

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