Harrisburg Prevails in Anti-Abortion Counselors’ Buffer Zone Row

Anti-abortion sidewalk counselors’ efforts to invalidate a Harrisburg, Pa., clinic buffer zone ordinance failed because the provision didn’t outlaw the activities in which they want to engage, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said Monday.

There was no evidence that the city had a policy or custom of preventing Colleen Reilly and Becky Biter’s allegedly First Amendment-protected peaceful one-on-one conversations with people on sidewalks outside abortion clinics, the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said in a nonprecedential decision.

Harrisburg adopted the ordinance in 2012. It makes it illegal to “knowingly congregate, patrol, picket or ...