The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday that an order prohibiting an anti-abortion protester from approaching a Planned Parenthood nurse violated his First Amendment free speech rights and must be overturned.
By
SCOTT BAUER KeynoteUSA
June 27, 2024, 10:30 am ET
• 3 minutes of reading
MADISON, Wisconsin – The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday that an order barring an anti-abortion protester from approaching a Planned Parenthood nurse violated her First Amendment free speech rights and must be overturned.
The court, controlled 4-3 by the Liberals, ruled unanimously and ordered the injunction to be dismissed.
In 2020, a Trempealeu County judge banned Brian Aish from being around nurse Nancy Kindschy, who sometimes worked at a small family planning clinic in the western Wisconsin town of Blair. Kindschy said Aish threatened her that bad things would happen to her or her family if she did not leave her job.
Aish had argued that his comments, made from a public sidewalk, were protected by free speech under the First Amendment. The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed.
Aish protested regularly between 2014 and 2019 at the clinic, primarily holding signs that cited Bible verses and preaching her Christian and anti-abortion beliefs, according to the court ruling. But starting in 2019, Aish began directing her comments toward Kindschy, targeting her with messages that she said were threatening.
In October 2019, Aish said Kindschy had time to repent and that “it won’t be long before bad things happen to you and your family” and that “a drunk driver could kill you tonight,” according to the court.
The Trempealeu County judge issued a four-year injunction prohibiting Aish from being near Kindschy. Aish appealed. A state appeals court upheld the injunction against Aish in 2022, but on Thursday the Supreme Court ordered its dismissal.
While the Wisconsin case was pending, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2023 that made it more difficult to convict a person of making a violent threat. That case involved a Colorado man who was convicted of harassing a musician.
In that case, the nation’s highest court said prosecutors must show that “the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements” and that “the defendant knowingly ignored a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as a threat of violence.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court cited that ruling in its order Thursday, saying the lower court had failed to determine that Aish “consciously ignored a substantial risk that her communications would be viewed as a threat of violence.”
“Aish’s statements could not have been true threats of violence because she denied any desire for violence to befall Kindschy,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in a separate opinion, concurring with the majority opinion written by Justice Rebecca Dallet.
Lawyers for Aish and Kindschy did not return messages.
Kindschy has since retired and the clinic where he worked is now closed.
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