WilmerHale secured a significant victory in the US Supreme Court, on behalf of pro bono client Eleanor McCullen and others in a First Amendment challenge to a Massachusetts law restricting speech on sidewalks outside reproductive health care clinics that perform abortions. In a decision delivered on June 26, 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the "buffer zone" law passed in Massachusetts in 2007 was unconstitutional.
Massachusetts first enacted a "buffer zone" law for reproductive health care facilities in 2000, after the Supreme Court upheld such a law in Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000). In 2007, Massachusetts replaced it with the law at issue in McCullen after claiming that the prior measure had not been effective and was difficult to enforce. The new law made it a crime to "enter or remain on a public...
