Cite as: 519 U. S. 357 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
milled around doorways and driveway entrances in an effort to block or hinder access to the clinics. Protesters sometimes threw themselves on top of the hoods of cars or crowded around cars as they attempted to turn into parking lot driveways. Other protesters on clinic property handed literature and talked to people entering the clinics—especially those women they believed were arriving to have abortions—in an effort to persuade them that abortion was immoral. Sometimes protesters used more aggressive techniques, with varying levels of belligerence: getting very close to women entering the clinics and shouting in their faces; surrounding, crowding, and yelling at women entering the clinics; or jostling, grabbing, pushing, and shoving women as they attempted to enter the clinics. Male and female clinic volunteers who attempted to escort patients past protesters into the clinics were sometimes elbowed, grabbed, or spit on. Sometimes the escorts pushed back. Some protesters remained in the doorways after the patients had entered the clinics, blocking others from entering and exiting.
On the sidewalks outside the clinics, protesters called "sidewalk counselors" used similar methods. Counselors would walk alongside targeted women headed toward the clinics, handing them literature and talking to them in an attempt to persuade them not to get an abortion. Unfortunately, if the women continued toward the clinics and did not respond positively to the counselors, such peaceful efforts at persuasion often devolved into "in your face" yelling, and sometimes into pushing, shoving, and grabbing. Men who accompanied women attempting to enter the clinics often became upset by the aggressive sidewalk counseling and sometimes had to be restrained (not always successfully) from fighting with the counselors.
The District Court found that the local police had been "unable to respond effectively" to the protests, for a number of reasons: the protests were constant, overwhelming police resources; when the police arrived, the protesters simply dis-
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