McCullen v. Coakley’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 federal appellate · 12 district ·

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) persons entering or leaving such facility; (2) employees or agents of such facility acting within the scope of their employment; (3) law enforcement, ambulance, firefighting, construction, utilities, public works and other municipal agents acting within the scope of their employment; and (4) persons using the public sidewalk or street right-of-way adjacent to such facility solely for the purpose of reaching a destination other than such facility.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. McCullen v. Coakley · 925 F. Supp. 2d 614 - Clift v. City of Burlington

2. “a radius of 35 feet of any portion of an entrance, exit or driveway of a reproductive health care facility or within the area within a rectangle created by extending the outside boundaries of any entrance, exit or driveway of a reproductive health care facility in straight lines to the point where such lines intersect the sidelines of the street in front of such entrance, exit or driveway.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. McCullen v. Coakley · 925 F. Supp. 2d 614 - Clift v. City of Burlington

3. “In striking this delicate balance, a court must calibrate the scales different ly depending on the nature of the governmental action. That calibration takes place along a continuum. At one end of the continuum are laws in which the government attempts to differentiate between divergent views on a singular subject; that is, laws in which the government attempts to ‘pick and choose among similarly situated speakers in order to advance or suppress a particular ideology or outlook.’ Such viewpoint-based discrimination is highly offensive to the core values of the First Amendment, and courts are wary of such encroachments .... Further along the continuum are laws that do not regulate speech per se but, rather, regulate the time, place, and manner in which speech may occur such as the ordinances in question. Because such time-place-manner restrictions are by definition content-neutral, they tend to burden speech only incidentally; that is, they burden speech for reasons unrelated to either the speaker’s viewpoint or the speech’s content. Regulations of this type will be upheld as long as ‘they are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, ... are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and ... leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information.’ This more relaxed standard, familiarly known as ‘intermediate scrutiny,’ is justified because the fact that a regulation is both content-neutral and viewpoint-neutral”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Thayer v. City of Worcester