Williston pregnancy center sues state

BY SARAH MEARHOFF VTDigger

National anti-abortion advocates and two Vermont-based crisis pregnancy centers are suing the state over Act 15, a law overwhelmingly passed by the state Legislature this year which, in part, makes crisis pregnancy centers subject to Vermont’s preexisting false and misleading advertising statutes.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs are Aspire Now, a pregnancy center located in Williston; Branches Pregnancy Resource Center, another located in Brattleboro; and National Institute for Family and Life Advocates, the nationwide anti-abortion advocacy nonprofit affiliated with the two Vermont facilities.

They are represented by attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom, a national conservative legal advocacy group, which recently garnered national headlines for spearheading the legal case against the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the widely used abortion medication mifepristone.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, alleges that the crisis pregnancy center section of Act 15 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit requests that the court grant a permanent injunction, barring the state from enforcing the section of the law.

Act 15, previously known as S.37, was one of two so-called reproductive shield laws passed tests and ultrasounds — but actively seek to dissuade patients from obtaining abortions. In testimony leading up to the passage of Act 15, abortion advocates and lawmakers alleged that such centers’ advertising strategies are misleading or, sometimes, outright false. for that state’s law that attempted to restrict crisis pregnancy centers. The California law was ultimately ruled unconstitutional, and the lawsuit was cited by abortion advocates in Vermont this year as a cautionary tale to consider when legislating crisis pregnancy centers. by Vermont legislators this year and signed into law by Republican Gov. Phil Scott. The two laws sought to further protect access to abortion, as well as gender-affirming care and other reproductive health care, in Vermont in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade case precedent last summer.

California’s since overturned FACT Act mandated that pregnancy centers disclose their full services and anti-abortion stances upfront — a requirement that the U.S. Supreme Court found to violate the facilities’ First Amendment rights to free speech. That’s why Vermont’s Act 15 instead went after pregnancy centers using the state’s false advertising statute.

Crisis pregnancy centers are nonmedical facilities that advertise themselves for pregnant patients, offering some basic obstetrics — such as pregnancy

In a press release announcing the lawsuit’s filing on Tuesday, Thomas Glessner, president of the National Institute for Family and Life Advocates, argued that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 affirmed crisis pregnancy centers’ rights to operate “without unjust government punishment or government interference with their message.”

The case Glessner was referring to — National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra — was filed by his organization against California

Still, Glessner said in Tuesday’s press release, Vermont is “trampling First Amendment rights of people whose only goal is to help women in their time of need” through Act 15.

“Vermont is wasting precious time seeking to hinder the constitutional right of women to choose life for their baby and by going after centers who help women rather than working with these pregnancy centers on what they can do together to meet the needs of women facing unplanned pregnancies,” Glessner said.