The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied without comment an appeal filed by abortion-rights opponents who were ordered to pay nearly $5 million in damages for printing the photos, names and addresses of abortion providers on "Wild West-style" wanted posters, the AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports (Holland, AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/1). In 1999, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon, an Oregon abortion clinic and four Oregon doctors who had been depicted on the posters filed suit against the posters' creators -- 13 individuals and two groups, the American Coalition of Life Activists and Advocates for Life Ministries, that oppose abortion rights, -- under federal racketeering laws and the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act, which prohibits using force or threats to prevent access to abortion clinics. The plaintiffs said the posters constituted a threat of violence, adding that four doctors who had been depicted in the posters subsequently were shot and killed. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2002 ruled that the posters and the related Nuremberg Files Web site, which published the names and addresses of abortion providers and then crossed them out if they had been killed, are not protected forms of free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 7/14/05). A Portland, Ore., jury originally awarded the plaintiffs $108 million in punitive damages, but the 9th Circuit Court reduced that amount to $4.73 million. The abortion-rights opponents who originally filed suit had appealed to the Supreme Court to have the amount further reduced (AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/1).

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