Anti-abortion group wins free-speech ruling SAN FRANCISCO Free speech gives them right to show disturbing photos

A federal appeals court gave an anti-abortion group the go-ahead Wednesday to drive trucks with enlarged photos of aborted fetuses past California schools, saying the Constitution protects the display of disturbing messages.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies interfered with free speech by ordering the driver of one such truck to move away from a middle school, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The deputies had cited a state law barring disruptive activities near public school grounds.

"The government cannot silence messages simply because they cause discomfort, fear or even anger," said a panel of three judges - Harry Pregerson, Marsha Berzon and William Fletcher, all considered liberals.

To be constitutional, the state law can prohibit speech that is disruptive because of the way it is expressed - for example, through a blaring loudspeaker - but not because of its content, said Pregerson, the author of the ruling.

A lawyer for the anti-abortion group, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, called the ruling "a tremendous victory for the pro-life movement."

"They can get out their message that reveals the horror of abortion," said attorney Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian organization. He said the trucks would be sent to middle schools and high schools, where students, he contended, are already being targeted by advocates of contraception and abortion.

John Allen, a lawyer for the school administrator who called the sheriff's deputies, said his client hadn't decided whether to appeal.

The case dates from March 2003, when an employee and a volunteer of the anti-abortion group drove the truck and an escort vehicle around Dodson Middle School in Rancho Palos Verdes before classes began. They left about two hours later after deputies and the school administrator told them they were violating the law, and have visited only one other school in the county since then, their lawyers told the court.

Allen said that with traffic heavy outside the school and some students talking about throwing rocks at the truck, the school administrator had decided that the display "was creating an imminent danger of physical harm to the students."

"If we had failed to call police and children were injured, we would face liability for that," Allen said.

A lower court upheld the school's and deputies' actions. But the appeals court said free expression in a public area, such as a city street, can't be suppressed because listeners or viewers object to its content.

Although schools are entitled to prevent activities that disrupt learning, Pregerson said, any disruption in this case was due to "the audience's reaction to the content of the speech." That speech was constitutionally protected, he said.

The case was argued in February 2007, four months before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Alaska principal's decision to punish a student for unfurling a banner outside a high school that read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," a message that the court said could be read as promoting drug use. The appellate panel did not mention that ruling Wednesday.