By ruling that anti-abortion groups cannot be sued for extortion under the RICO law, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a significant victory to all protest groups.

Freedom of speech won an important victory before the U.S. Supreme Court last month, when the high court ruled that anti-abortion protesters could not be sued as extortionists and racketeers.

The case of Scheidler vs. the National Organization for Women had been bouncing around the courts since 1986, dangling like a sword over many groups whose protest activities could result in civil liability and crushing fines. In its 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court put that concern to rest. It refused to find that activists' efforts to disrupt the work of abortion clinics rose to the level of extortion.

Joseph Scheidler helped lead the Pro-Life Action Network, an umbrella group for anti-abortion organizations. In the 1980s, PLAN held seminars on organizing protests and "rescues" at abortion clinics to disrupt their operations.

At the height of these efforts, NOW and a group of abortion clinics sued Scheidler and other anti-abortion activists using the powerful Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. The law, passed by Congress in 1970, was intended to cripple the Mafia and provided loose standards of culpability and provisions tripling the fines for those found in violation of RICO.

In an earlier ruling in this very case, the Supreme Court gave the green light to NOW to use RICO against anti-abortion protesters by saying the law's civil liability provisions could be applied to individuals who have ideological as well as economic motives for commiting a crime. NOW won the subsequent trial and was awarded more than $250,000 in damages.

The trickiest part of the RICO lawsuit for NOW was that it had to demonstrate a racketeering conspiracy -- i.e., that the protesters had committed at least two criminal acts the law lists as predicates. Because RICO was intended to be applied to gangsters, the predicates include murder, drug dealing, extortion and kidnapping, not trespass and minor property damage.

NOW solved this dilemma by claiming that a woman's right to obtain an abortion constituted intangible property. By interfering with that right, NOW claimed protesters were engaging in extortion -- obtaining someone else's property through the use of force or threatened force.

The high court didn't buy this stretch. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority: "(E)ven when (the anti-abortion activists') acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of "shutting down' a clinic that performed abortions, such acts did not constitute extortion." And with that, the court ended this dangerous case.

Had NOW succeeded, any protest group that engaged in civil disobedience, be it for environmental protection, animal rights or any other cause, would have been open to similar lawsuits. In fact, animal rights groups had urged the court to take up the case because they too had been sued under RICO by the targets of their actions.

The use of RICO against protesters could have permanently curbed the robust debate our Constitution protects. In its decision the court may not have made any sweeping declaration on the importance of free speech, but it created a friendlier legal environment for people who have something to say.

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