Court Rules Anti-abortion Web Site is Protected by First Amendment


 
      SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (EP) - A federal appeals court ruled that a web site which showed pictures of abortion doctors on "Wanted" posters was a constitutional exercise of free speech. The "Nuremberg Files" web site posted names and addresses of abortionists and called them "baby butchers."
    A jury ruled that the site constituted a terroristic threat, and ordered the American Coalition of Life Activists to pay more than $100 million in damages. But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit threw out that decision, ruling that the site was legal because its content did not literally convey a threat, even if judges and juries may have considered it threatening.
    "If their [works] merely encouraged unrelated terrorists, then their words are protected by the First Amendment," Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the panel.
    Organizers of the site maintained that they were collecting data on doctors in the hope of someday putting them on trial for crimes against humanity, just as Nazi war criminals were tried at Nuremberg.
 
 
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