The Life Legal Defense Foundation sometimes presents itself as an ordinary law firm that just happens to represent anti-abortion extremists.
The California First District Court of Appeals shot a hole in LLDF’s cover in August 2000 when it ordered a lower court treat LLDF Legal Director Catherine Short and LLDF Board of Directors member Terry L. Thompson with more caution than other attorneys.
Planned Parenthood’s San Mateo County clinics, their patients, the patients’ companions, and the clinic staff and volunteers were regular targets of demonstrations, at both the clinics and their homes. The demonstrations led to litigation, in which Planned Parenthood accused the demonstrators of interference, harassment, and emotional distress.
In the course of the litigation, the LLDF lawyers sought a Superior Court order that Planned Parenthood provide them with the names, home addresses, and home telephone numbers of clinic patients, staff, and volunteers. The Superior Court approved the order for staff and volunteers (though not patients), specifying that the information be disclosed for “Attorneys-Eyes-Only.”
Planned Parenthood appealed the order to disclose the personal information to the LLDF lawyers, arguing it posed a substantial risk of the staff and volunteers’ privacy and safety. The Court of Appeals agreed with Planned Parenthood and overturned the order.
“Human experience compels us to conclude that disclosure carries with it serious risks which include, but are not limited to: the nationwide dissemination of the individual’s private information, the offensive and intrusive invasion of the individual’s neighborhood for the purpose of coercing the individual to stop constitutionally-protected associational activities and the infliction of threats, force and violence,” the Court of Appeals wrote.
The fact that disclosure would be limited to the LLDF lawyers did not persuade the court, which cited “evidence that the attorneys who represent real parties at interest [anti-abortion demonstrators] in this case also have personally engaged in such protest activities” at clinic workers’ homes.
