Detroit considers limits on demonstrating outside health care facilities

Detroit will consider an ordinance that would prevent people from protesting within 15 feet of a health care facility and limit certain interactions up to 100 feet of a facility.

Proposed by Detroit City Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero, the ordinance aims to provide unimpeded access to medical services while protecting the First Amendment rights of demonstrators," according to Thomas "TJ" Rogers, Santiago-Romero's communications and engagement manager.

"She believes we need to protect clinics and their ability to operate smoothly, while ensuring the safety of workers and patients in a way that still allows for free speech," he said. "There are too many instances of folks being harassed and intimidated who are seeking services, and in a politically charged climate, we need to be proactive to ensure public safety."

If approved, it would establish two types of "bubble zones" around health care facilities, a term referring to designated areas intended to create a physical or spatial separation between two or more entities or activities, Rogers said.

One bubble zone would be a 100-foot radius from the entrance to a health care facility, where people wouldn't be able to get within 8 feet of another person to "pass out leaflets, display signs, or engage in oral protest, education or counseling without the other person's consent," he said in an email.

The other zone would be a 15-foot radius from the facility, an area where people would be prohibited from congregating, patrolling, picketing or demonstrating in front of the entrance ― with the exception of emergency, public safety and security personnel.

A public hearing on the ordinance will be held at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 30 on the 13th Floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

A few abortion rights advocates praised the ordinance during a recent Detroit City Council meeting, saying it will make people in Detroit seeking preventative care and reproductive care safer. But an attorney affiliated with Right to Life of Michigan said in a statement that the city of Detroit proposes to "prohibit and punish a person's speech for their truthful pro-life viewpoint on the topic of abortion, peacefully and lovingly shared on a sidewalk."

Rogers said Santiago-Romero, the councilwoman who introduced the ordinance, feels that it should already be in place and is "responding to calls by those who have been impacted."

When asked if people's ability to enter abortion clinics was why the ordinance created, Rogers said "that's part of it." He noted other examples of demonstration in the United States, including protesters blocking access to a COVID-19 vaccination site and people going on strike at hospitals.

But William Wagner, an attorney who served as counsel for Right to Life of Michigan in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization U.S. Supreme Court case, criticized the ordinance.

“In a radical reaction to the overruling of Roe v. Wade, the city government improperly seeks to make engaging in First Amendment activity illegal, unconstitutionally banning some of the most protected kinds of expression in some of the most protected places for such expression," he said in an email.

Dr. Natalie Gladstein, who spoke remotely to the City Council on Tuesday, said she is an OB/GYN and an abortion provider in Metro Detroit. She said the buffer ordinance would help patients and would "promote safety for people seeking health care in the city."

"I am harassed every time that I go to work by protesters who are often armed with, at some times, AR-15s, and are often very threatening to myself and to my patients," she said, "and I don't think that anybody deserves to be harassed when they are seeking health care."

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