812
Opinion of Scalia, J.
earlier injunction did not, and could not, prohibit all "interference"—for example, the minor interference incidentally produced by lawful picketing and leafletting. What the Court needs, and cannot come up with, is a finding that the petitioners interfered in a manner prohibited by the earlier injunction. A conclusion that they "block[ed], imped[ed] or obstruct[ed] ingress . . . or egress" (the terminology of the original injunction) within the only fair, and indeed the only permissible, meaning of that phrase cannot be supported by the facts found.
To sum up: The interests assertedly protected by the supplementary injunction did not include any interest whose impairment was a violation of Florida law or of a Florida court injunction. Unless the Court intends today to overturn long-settled jurisprudence, that means that the interests cannot possibly qualify as "significant interests" under the Court's new standard.
C
Finally, I turn to the Court's application of the second part of its test: whether the provisions of the injunction "burden no more speech than necessary" to serve the significant interest protected.
This test seems to me amply and obviously satisfied with regard to the noise restriction that the Court approves: It is only such noise as would reach the patients in the abortion clinic that is forbidden—and not even at all times, but only during certain fixed hours and "during surgical procedures and recovery periods." (The latter limitation may raise vagueness and notice problems, but that does not concern us here. Moreover, as I have noted earlier, the noise restriction is invalid on other grounds.) With regard to the 36-foot speech-free zone, however, it seems to me just as obvious that the test which the Court sets for itself has not been met.
Assuming a "significant state interest" of the sort cognizable for injunction purposes (i. e., one protected by a law that has been or is threatened to be violated) in both (1) keeping
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