Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western N. Y., 519 U.S. 357, 35 (1997)

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Cite as: 519 U. S. 357 (1997)

Opinion of Scalia, J.

serve a significant government interest." 512 U. S., at 765 (emphasis added). Thus, if the situation confronting the District Court permitted "accommodation" of petitioners' speech rights, it demanded it. The Court's effort to recharacterize this responsibility of special care imposed by the First Amendment as some sort of judicial gratuity is perhaps the most alarming concept in an opinion that contains much to be alarmed about.

III

I disagree with the Court's facile rejection of the argument that no cause of action was properly found to support the present injunction. Petitioners contend that the only cause of action which could conceivably support the injunction is a trespass claim; but that cannot support the restrictions at issue, which are designed, as the District Court stated, to prevent obstruction of access and the invasion of "personal space," 799 F. Supp., at 1434, rather than to prevent trespass.

The Court responds by pointing out that the case contains a nontrespass claim under N. Y. Civ. Rights Law § 40-c(2) (McKinney 1992), which provides that "[n]o person shall, because of . . . sex . . . be subjected to any discrimination in his civil rights, or to any harassment . . . in the exercise thereof, by any other person." That is true enough, but it seems to me clear that that imaginative state-law claim cannot support a preliminary injunction because it does not have a probability of success on the merits. See 11A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2948.3 (2d ed. 1995). It is, to put it mildly, far from apparent that seeking to prevent both men and women from aborting both male and female human fetuses constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. Moreover, the reasoning which led the District Court to conclude otherwise has been specifically rejected by this Court. The District Court wrote: "Having demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their federal § 1985(3) claim, plaintiffs have also, by definition,

391

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