active concert or participation

Respondents include three physicians and four medical facilities that provide abortions along with Pro-Choice Network of Western New York. On September 24, 1990, they filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York against fifty individuals and three organizations including Operation Rescue, Project Rescue Western New York, and Project Life of Rochester. The complaint alleged that defendants had consistently engaged in illegal blockades and other disruptive conduct at the clinics and sought a temporary restraining order, permanent injunction, and damages. Between 1988 and 1991 the clinics faced large-scale blockades in which protesters marched, stood, knelt, sat, or lay in parking lot driveways and doorways. Smaller-scale activities also occurred in which protesters trespassed onto clinic property, crowded around cars attempting to enter parking lots, and engaged in aggressive sidewalk counseling that included yelling in patients' faces, surrounding and jostling women, and sometimes grabbing, pushing, or shoving them and their escorts. Male companions of patients sometimes had to be restrained from fighting with counselors, and clinic volunteers who escorted patients were elbowed, grabbed, or spit on. On September 27, 1990, three days after the complaint was filed, the District Court issued a temporary restraining order that banned demonstrating within fifteen feet of any person entering or leaving the clinics except for two sidewalk counselors who could engage in nonthreatening conversation but had to cease and desist if the individual indicated a desire to be left alone. Defendants initially complied but later resumed constructive blockades involving demonstrations around entrances, harassment of patients and staff, and attempts to impede cars and people. The District Court held twenty-seven days of hearings on five contempt motions arising from incidents between October 1990 and 1991. In February 1992, after twelve additional days of testimony, the District Court issued the preliminary injunction containing fixed fifteen-foot buffer zones around doorways, driveway entrances, and parking lot entrances, floating fifteen-foot buffer zones around any person or vehicle seeking access, and a cease-and-desist requirement that forced sidewalk counselors inside the zones to retreat fifteen feet once a targeted person indicated a desire not to be counseled. The injunction applied to named defendants, their officers, agents, representatives, and all persons acting in concert with them. Petitioners appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which affirmed en banc in 1995. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 1996.

On April 2, 1963, several Negro ministers including the petitioners filed with the Birmingham City Commission a request for a permit to picket and hold a parade on April 5 and 6. The request was denied. On April 3 the petitioners gave notice of their intention to demonstrate on April 4, 5, and 6, and the City Commission again denied a permit. On April 6 and 7 the petitioners and others marched in Birmingham without a permit and were arrested and charged with parading without a permit. On April 10, 1963, Birmingham officials filed a bill of complaint in state circuit court against 139 individuals and two organizations. The bill and affidavits alleged that during the preceding seven days the respondents had sponsored sit-in demonstrations, kneel-in demonstrations, mass street parades, trespasses on private property, and unlawful picketing, conduct calculated to provoke breaches of the peace and to place an undue burden on the police department. The circuit judge granted a temporary injunction enjoining the petitioners from participating in or encouraging mass street parades without a permit as required by the Birmingham ordinance. Five of the eight petitioners were served with copies of the writ early the next morning. Several hours after service the petitioners held a press conference at which a statement was distributed declaring their intention to disobey the injunction because it was raw tyranny under the guise of maintaining law and order. That night a meeting took place at which one petitioner announced that injunction or no injunction they were going to march the next day. On April 12, Good Friday, a group of about 50 or 60 proceeded to parade along the sidewalk while a crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 onlookers stood by; at least three petitioners participated. On April 14, Easter Sunday, another crowd of 1,500 to 2,000 gathered; one petitioner was seen organizing members of the crowd in formation, a group of about 50 headed by three other petitioners started down the sidewalk, and violence occurred when members of the crowd threw rocks. The next day city officials applied for an order to show cause why the petitioners should not be held in contempt. At the hearing the petitioners sought to attack the constitutionality of the injunction on the ground that it was vague and overbroad and restrained free speech, and to attack the Birmingham parade ordinance on similar grounds and on the further ground that it had been administered in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner. The circuit judge refused to consider these contentions, noting that there had been neither a motion to dissolve the injunction nor an effort to comply by applying for a permit. The court found against the petitioners on the issues of jurisdiction and knowing violation, and imposed upon each a sentence of five days in jail and a $50 fine. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari to consider whether the contempt convictions are invalid because of the unconstitutionality of the ordinance or the injunction.

John Harris, Jr., was indicted in a California state court charged with violation of the California Penal Code §§ 11400 and 11401, known as the Criminal Syndicalism Act. He then filed a complaint in the Federal District Court asking that court to enjoin District Attorney Evelle J. Younger of Los Angeles County from prosecuting him. Harris alleged that the prosecution and the presence of the Act inhibited him in the exercise of his rights of free speech and press guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Jim Dan and Diane Hirsch, members of the Progressive Labor Party, intervened as plaintiffs claiming that the prosecution of Harris would inhibit them from peacefully advocating the program of their party to replace capitalism with socialism. Farrell Broslawsky, an instructor in history at Los Angeles Valley College, also intervened claiming that the prosecution made him uncertain whether he could teach about the doctrines of Karl Marx or read from the Communist Manifesto as part of his classwork. None of the intervenors had been indicted, arrested, or threatened with prosecution. A three-judge Federal District Court convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2284 held that it had jurisdiction and power to restrain the District Attorney from prosecuting. The court held that the State's Criminal Syndicalism Act was void for vagueness and overbreadth in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It accordingly restrained the District Attorney from further prosecution of the pending action against Harris, as reported at 281 F. Supp. 507 (1968). Younger appealed directly to the Supreme Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253. At the time the federal suit was filed, Harris was actually being prosecuted by California for a violation of the Criminal Syndicalism Act. The intervenors claimed only that they felt inhibited by the Act and the pending prosecution of Harris, without alleging any threat of prosecution against themselves.

Respondents operate a medical clinic in Melbourne, Florida, that offers abortions among other services. The clinic is located on Dixie Highway, a major traffic artery in the city. The clinic property occupies less than one acre and is bounded on the north and south by other commercial property, on the west by a two-lane road, and on the east by a parking lot and an intersecting street. In September 1992, a group of antiabortion protesters began picketing the clinic. The protesters, whose number varied from 10 to 40 on any given day, engaged in a variety of activities near the clinic. They sang, chanted, and carried signs and banners. They also distributed literature to, and engaged in conversations with, people approaching the clinic. Although the protesters were generally nonviolent, they occasionally trespassed onto clinic property and blocked access to the clinic. They also picketed the nearby residences of some of the clinic's employees. In response to these activities, the clinic obtained an injunction from the Florida Circuit Court. The initial injunction prohibited trespassing on or entering clinic property, blocking or interfering with access to or egress from the clinic, physically or verbally abusing persons entering or leaving the clinic, making loud or raucous noise within earshot of the clinic during specified hours, physically approaching any person seeking clinic services within 300 feet unless the person indicates a desire to communicate, using any images observable by patients inside the clinic, and picketing or demonstrating within 300 feet of clinic employees' residences. After the initial injunction proved insufficient, protesters continued to impede access to the clinic by congregating on the paved portion of Dixie Way and marching in front of the clinic's driveways. Sidewalk counselors approached vehicles heading toward the clinic. The number of people congregating varied from a handful to 400, and the noise varied from singing and chanting to the use of loudspeakers and bullhorns. The trial court issued a broader amended injunction that established a 36-foot buffer zone around the clinic entrances and driveway, noise restrictions during surgical procedures and recovery periods, a 300-foot no-approach zone around the clinic, a 300-foot buffer zone around employees' residences, and an in concert provision. The Florida Supreme Court upheld the amended injunction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict between the Florida Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.