376
Opinion of the Court
conclusion, if only because of the dangerous situation created by the interaction between cars and protesters and because of the fights that threatened to (and sometimes did) develop. Even though the governmental interest in public safety is clearly a valid interest here, as it was in Madsen, plaintiffs in neither case pleaded a claim for "threat to public safety." Indeed, this would be a strange concept, since a plaintiff customarily alleges violations of private rights, while "public safety" expresses a public right enforced by the government through its criminal laws and otherwise. Thus, the fact that "threat to public safety" is not listed anywhere in respondents' complaint as a claim does not preclude a court from relying on the significant governmental interest in public safety in assessing petitioners' First Amendment argument.7
Given the factual similarity between this case and Madsen, we conclude that the governmental interests underlying the injunction in Madsen—ensuring public safety and order, promoting the free flow of traffic on streets and sidewalks, protecting property rights, and protecting a woman's freedom to seek pregnancy-related services,8 ibid.—also underlie the injunction here, and in combination are certainly signifi-cant enough to justify an appropriately tailored injunction to secure unimpeded physical access to the clinics.
7 Justice Scalia in dissent contends that the District Court's reliance on "public safety" was not permissible because only the government may seek an injunction based on that factor. But the District Court's reliance on this factor was not to use it as an element which supported respondents' claim for an injunction. Rather, the court used this factor as a basis for rejecting petitioners' challenge to the injunction on First Amendment grounds.
8 We need not decide whether the governmental interest in protecting the medical privacy and well-being of patients "held 'captive' by medical circumstance"—at issue in Madsen—is implicated here. That interest was relevant in Madsen because patients while inside the clinic heard the chanting and shouting of the protesters and suffered increased health risks as a result. See id., at 772. Here, although the District Court found that the loud voices of sidewalk counselors could be heard inside the clinic, petitioners do not challenge the injunction's ban on excessive noise.
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