The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of an Oregon free speech case. A 2004 lawsuit against the Bush administration claimed that Secret Service discriminated against anti-Bush demonstrators by keeping Bush supporters in place but moving the demonstrators two blocks away from the president’s hotel. (NewsMax, November 26, 2013, by Bloomberg News)
The Court is also looking at a California case in which John David Apel, a protester at the Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Santa Barbara, was limited to a protest zone barring him from protesting along the Pacific Coast Highway that runs through the base or anywhere else on the federal property. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned Apel’s convictions on the grounds that the restrictions violated his First Amendment rights.
The Court will consider a Massachusetts law in January that creates a buffer zone around abortion clinics keeping pro-life protesters from reaching women considering an abortion. (The Washington Post, November 30, 2013, by Robert Barnes)