From Justice Thomas's dissent from the denial of certiorari in Coalition Life v. City of Carbondale (Justice Alito also noted that he would have granted the petition):
In Hill v. Colorado (2000), this Court upheld a state law restricting peaceful speech within 100 feet of abortion clinics. It was clear at the time that Hill's reasoning "contradict[ed] more than a half century of well-established First Amendment principles." A number of us have since described the decision as an "absurd," "defunct," "erroneous," and "long-discredited" "aberration" from the rest of our First Amendment jurisprudence. See City of Austin v. Reagan Nat. Advertising of Austin, LLC (2022) (Thomas, J., joined by Gorsuch and Barrett, JJ., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted). We have long stopped applying Hill. And, a majority of this Court recently acknowledged that Hill "distorted [our] First Amendment doctrines." Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022). Following our repudiation in Dobbs, I do not see what is left of Hill. Yet, lower courts continue to feel bound by it. The Court today declines an invitation to set the record straight on Hill's defunct status. I respectfully dissent.
Hill involved a 1993 Colorado statute that established "buffer zones" around abortion clinics. The law made it a crime for any person, within 100 feet of any "health-care facility" entrance, to "knowingly approach" within 8 feet of another person, without that person's consent, "for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill to, displaying a sign to, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling with such other person." Put another way, Colorado's law—still in effect today—prohibits unconsented "sidewalk counseling" within 100 feet of abortion clinics.
