The short version: at question in McCullen v. Coakley was whether a Massachusetts law keeping abortion protestors farther away than 35 feet from an abortion center was a violation of those protesters’ free speech, given that said law exempted abortion clinic personnel. The court agreed, 9-0, that (as SCOTUSblog put it, via Legal Insurrection) “The Court makes clear that states can pass laws that specifically ensure access to clinics. It holds that states cannot more broadly prohibit speech on public streets and sidewalks. ” As the Boston Globe noted, “The high court’s justices had indicated when they heard the case in January that the state needed to find other ways to address safety concerns and prevent the opponents from impeding access to clinics.” That’s Supreme-Court speak for Fix it or we will; and you will hate how we fix it, because we find that that’s a great way to keep us from getting the dumber cases for review.
Speaking of dumb, this reaction from the Hard Left Center for American Progress is choice: “The Supreme Court has once again ruled against women.” …It’s not every day that Ruth Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor – all of whom, of course, are both Supreme Court Justices, and reliable liberals – get accused of being anti-woman by the Hard Left. Then again, it’s not every day that those Justices concur in a court decision that dares to suggest, be it ever so mildly, that perhaps the nigh-religious fundamentalist tenets of the hardcore pro-abortion movement are not quite actual laws of physics. Then again, to a certain ilk of ideologue ‘freedom of speech’ means ‘I should be free to stop your speech’…
The SCOTUS limited the ruling to this one law. The Buffer Zone for any protest should be on the sidewalk and no physical contact/obstruction. This one Buffer Zone went WAY too far.