CALIFORNIA | CONNECTICUT | DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA | KANSAS | MAINE | MARYLAND | MASSACHUSETTS | MINNESOTA | NEVADA | NEW YORK | NORTH CAROLINA | OREGON | WASHINGTON | WISCONSIN

CALIFORNIA: Series of laws prohibiting individuals from intentionally detaining others or obstructing them from entering or exiting clinic³; igniting explosive or committing arson at a health care facility, abortion clinic, or office where a meeting regarding abortion policies or practices is taking place⁴; and willfully and maliciously damaging a structure with butyric acid or similar substance. ⁵ The Reproductive Rights Law Enforcement Act requires the state attorney general to collect and analyze information relating to anti-reproductive rights crimes and to develop plans to prevent, apprehend, prosecute, and report such crimes; it also provides police training on anti-reproductive rights crimes. ⁶ A law creating the Address Confidentiality for Reproductive Health Care Service Providers, Employees, Volunteers, and Patients program, authorizes state and local agencies to withhold personal address information from public records if the providers, employees, and patients become certified by the state to participate in the confidentiality program. ⁷

CONNECTICUT: Imposes criminal and civil penalties on a person who uses force or the threat of force to deprive a person of equal protection of state and federal laws or of equal privileges and immunities under state and federal law; the legislative history of the law indicates that it was designed to protect clinic access. ⁸

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Prohibits willful or reckless interference with access to or from medical facility, or disruption of the normal function of a medical facility by obstructing an individual’s free passage, making noise that unreasonably disturbs the peace, trespassing on the facility, making harassing or threatening phone calls to the facility, or threatening to injure the owners, employees, patient, or property of the facility. Also imposes criminal penalties on anyone who acts to intentionally prevent a medical provider or his or her family from entering or exiting their home. ⁹

KANSAS: Prohibits individuals from entering or remaining on property without authorization in a way that interferes with access to a health care facility. ¹⁰

MAINE: Prohibits the intentional commission of the following acts: engaging in physical obstruction of a building; making repeated phone calls to a person or building with the intent of impeding access to a person’s or building’s telephone lines or otherwise disrupting a person’s or building’s activities; activating a device or expose a substance that releases noxious and offensive odors within a building; after having been ordered by law enforcement officer to cease making noise, intentionally making noise that can be heard within a building and with the intent of either jeopardizing the health of persons receiving health services within the building or interfering with the safe and effective delivery of those services. ¹¹

MARYLAND: Prohibits the physical detention of an individual or the obstruction, hindrance, or impediment of an individual’s passage with the intent of preventing the individual from entering or exiting a medical facility. ¹²

MASSACHUSETTS: Prohibits individuals from knowingly obstructing the entrance to a medical facility and from entering or remaining in a medical facility so as to impede the provision of medical services. ¹³

MICHIGAN: Prohibits individuals from entering the premises of a health care facility for the purpose of engaging in activity that would cause a reasonable person to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested and that actually causes an employee, patient, or visitor to have such a feeling. ¹⁴

MINNESOTA: Imposes civil and criminal penalties on a person who intentionally and physically obstructs access to a hospital or medical facility. ¹⁵

NEVADA: Prohibits the detention or obstruction of an individual with the intent of preventing them from entering or exiting a medical or health facility or physician’s office. ¹⁶

NEW YORK: Imposes criminal penalties on a person who (1) by force, threat of force, or by physical obstruction intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with, another person because s/he is obtaining or providing reproductive health services or in order to discourage a person from obtaining or providing reproductive health services; or (2) intentionally damages or attempts to damage the property of a health care facility because it provides reproductive health care services. This law does not apply to a minor’s parent or guardian whose conduct is directed exclusively at the minor. ¹⁷

NORTH CAROLINA: Criminalizes the willful or intentional possession of or immediate access to any dangerous weapon while participating in, affiliated with, or present as a spectator at a demonstration upon a private health care facility or upon any public place. ¹⁸ Prohibits the obstruction of an individual’s entrance to or exit from a health care facility in a way that deprives or delays the person from providing, obtaining, or helping another to obtain, health care services, or who injures or threatens another person who is providing, obtaining, or helping another to obtain health care services. ¹⁹

OREGON: Imposes criminal penalties on individuals who intentionally damage the property of a medical facility, use the medical facility property to interfere with the facility’s efficiency, or damage property by intentionally interfering with the service of a medical facility. ²⁰

WASHINGTON: Imposes civil and criminal penalties on a person who willfully or recklessly interferes with access to or from a health care facility or willfully or recklessly disrupts the normal function of such facility by: (1) physical obstruction; (2) noise that unreasonably disturbs the peace within the facility; (3) trespass; (4) repeated telephoning or knowingly permitting the use of any telephone under his or her control for such purpose; or (5) threats to owners, agents, patients, employees, or property of facility, or knowingly permitting the use of any telephone under his or her control for such purpose. ²¹

WISCONSIN: Criminalizes the act of intentionally entering a medical facility without the consent of a person lawfully upon the premises under the circumstances tending to provoke a breach of the peace. ²²

Clinic Access/FACE Laws | Federal and State FACE Laws | Picketing and Harassment

Endnotes, cont.
1. 18 U.S.C § 248.
2. The FACE Act has also been used to prevent threatening website activity as well. See e.g., Planned Parenthood v. Am. Coalition of Life Activists, 290 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2002) (en banc), cert. denied, 123 S. Ct. 2637 (2003) (posters depicting abortion providers with the caption "GUILTY," and webpage displaying an anti-abortion activist organization’s so-called "Nuremberg Files," constituted "true threats" under FACE and thus was not protected speech). Despite the fact that the FACE Act has been upheld by a majority of circuit courts, challenges to the law are still being brought. See e.g., United States v. Bird, No. H-03-0163, slip. Op. at 18-19 (S.D. Tex. Aug. 18, 2003) (district court strikes down portion of FACE law).
3. CAL. PENAL CODE § 602.11 (2003); CAL. CIV. CODE §§ 3427-3427.4 (2003).
4. CAL. PENAL CODE § 11413 (2003).
5. CAL. PENAL CODE § 594.4 (2003).
6.CAL. PENAL CODE §§ 13775-13779 (2003).
7. CAL. GOV’T CODE §§ 6215-6215.5 (2003).
8. CONN. GEN. STAT. ANN. §§ 53-37b, 52-571a (2003). See Senator George Jepsen, Statements on Senate Floor Concerning S.B. 1046 (June 2, 1993), available at http://www.cga.state.ct.us.
9. D.C. CODE ANN. §§ 22-1314.01-1314.02 (2003).
10. KAN. STAT. ANN. § 21-3721 (2002), amended by 2003 Kan. Sess. Laws Ch. 128 (S.B. 225).
11. ME. REV. STAT. ANN. tit. 5, §§ 4684, 4684-A, 4686-B (2003).
12. MD. CODE ANN., CRIM. § 10-204 (2003).
13. MASS. GEN. LAWS ANN. ch. 266, § 120E (2003).
14. MICH. COMP. LAWS ANN. § 333.20198 (2003).
15. MINN. STAT. ANN. § 609.7495 (2002).
16. NEV. REV. STAT. ANN. § 449.760 (2002).
17. N.Y. PENAL LAW § 240.70 (2002); N.Y. CIV. RIGHTS LAW § 79-m (2003).
18. N.C. GEN. STAT. ANN. §14-277.2 (2003).
19. N.C. GEN. STAT. ANN. § 14-277.4 (2003).
20. OR. REV. STAT. §164.365 (2001), amended by 2003 Or. Sess. Laws Ch. 543 (S.B. 564).
21. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. §§ 9A.50.005-.902 (2003).
22. WIS. STAT. ANN. § 943.145 (2003).