Liberty Counsel filed a brief last week in the federal case Reilly v. City of Harrisburg, seeking a preliminary injunction against a “buffer zone” ordinance enacted by the City of Harrisburg which prohibits pro-life speech on public sidewalks up to 70 feet outside a Planned Parenthood abortion center. The ordinance was drafted by Planned Parenthood and passed without any debate or serious discussion by Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion allies on the Harrisburg City Council.

Liberty Counsel’s brief follows a two-day evidentiary hearing in October, where Liberty Counsel’s clients, Colleen Reilly and Becky Biter, who have regularly engaged in peaceful sidewalk counseling to encourage women to protect the life of their unborn children, testified. Biter and Reilly have been harassed and intimidated by clinic staff and the local police since the ordinance passed. During the hearing, they testified about how the ordinance shuts down their peaceful, life-saving counseling on the public sidewalk outside of Harrisburg’s last remaining abortion facility. 

The hearing was ordered by the Court of Appeals after Liberty Counsel won the first appeal in the case following the trial court’s initial denial of the motion seeking to block enforcement of the ordinance. Liberty Counsel demonstrated that the City of Harrisburg blatantly ignored its constitutional obligations to protect speech by imposing an ideological ban on pro-life speech in a traditional public forum where the First Amendment provides the most robust protection.

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