On July 21, the plaintiff in Vitagliano v. Westchester County petitioned the Supreme Court to find that a county ordinance violates the First Amendment. The ordinance prohibits a person from “engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling” about abortion within 8 feet of a person without that person’s express consent, if that person happens to be within 100 feet of an abortion facility.
The plaintiff, Debra Vitagliano, is a devout Catholic occupational therapist for children with special needs. Vitagliano wanted to do sidewalk counseling outside a Westchester County abortion facility but was facing a criminal misdemeanor if she even spoke to a woman about alternative options to abortion. According to Joseph Davis, an attorney for Becket Law who is representing Vitagliano, Westchester County “doesn’t want women to know about other options” than abortion. The ordinance requires that “within a certain distance you can’t even walk up and have a peaceful conversation,” Davis said.
The ordinance was passed in 2022 following the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning an alleged constitutional “right” to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Westchester County had not seen a need to provide any “bubble zones,” areas where free speech is restricted, until after the Dobbs decision.
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The ordinance is almost identical to a law upheld as constitutional in the 2000 Supreme Court case Hill v. Colorado. The Hill decision was authored by the late Justice John Paul Stevens but joined by five other justices, including supposedly conservative Chief Justice
