Judge blocks expanding fraud law to pregnancy centers

SPRINGFIELD - A new law allowing Illinoisans to sue so-called crisis pregnancy centers under the state's Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act is on hold after a federal judge late Thursday granted a preliminary injunction against it.

After a lengthy hearing in his Rockford courtroom, Judge Iain Johnston issued a brief oral ruling on Thursday evening, saying the law violated the First Amendment. On Friday, he filed a 14-page order explaining the preliminary injunction, which began by recalling a joke told by the late conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

"Justice Scalia once said that he wished all federal judges were given a stamp that read 'stupid but constitutional,'" Johnston wrote. "SB 1909 is both stupid and very likely unconstitutional."

Johnston, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2020, went on to characterize the law as "likely classic content and viewpoint discrimination prohibited by the First Amendment."

Anti-abortion groups filed their lawsuit within an hour of Gov. J.B. Pritzker signing's the law last week. The measure expands Illinois' long-standing consumer fraud law to explicitly include crisis pregnancy centers, which abortion rights advocates say often employ aggressive tactics to confuse those seeking abortions. Under the law, a judge or jury can award up to $50,000 in civil penalties for each act of fraud or deception proven in court.

But crisis pregnancy centers and their allies claim that threat of litigation is an attack on their First Amendment rights. After Thursday evening's ruling, Peter Breen - a former GOP state lawmaker and vice president of the anti-abortion Thomas More Society - celebrated the injunction in a statement.

"Across the nation, pregnancy help ministries are being discriminated against by laws that target their life-affirming work," said Breen, who argued for the injunction in court. "The injunction granted today sends a strong, clear message to the country that the First Amendment protects pro-life speech."

The law was part of an ongoing expansion of abortion rights in Illinois as surrounding states have restricted access to the procedure in the 13 months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Planned Parenthood of Illinois CEO Jennifer Welch on Friday said she was frustrated with Johnston's injunction.

"For decades, crisis pregnancy centers have targeted our patients using deceptive and false practices," Welch said in a statement. "Often crisis pregnancy centers provide misleading and medically inaccurate information, sometimes deliberately misdiagnosing patients or misdating their pregnancies so people think they have more time to decide about abortion or that they are past the time when they can have an abortion."

Crisis pregnancy centers, which are often affiliated with religious organizations, are focused on diverting women from having abortions. They range from volunteer-run outfits that can't offer much more than counseling to facilities with licensed medical professionals on staff who can perform exams. They advertise services such as pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and even material help like baby formula and diapers.

But proponents of the law say crisis pregnancy centers' efforts sometimes include tactics meant to confuse abortion seekers. Those include locating facilities near real abortion clinics, giving false information about the risks of abortions and attempting to physically divert the clients of real abortion providers. Crisis pregnancy centers will sometimes park mobile units, which advertise services such as ultrasounds, outside real abortion clinics.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose office pushed for the law during the General Assembly's spring legislative session, has often told the story of a visit to an abortion clinic where his driver was stopped by crisis pregnancy center volunteers who carried clipboards and attempted to divert him from going into the facility, instead saying they needed to check him in first.

A spokesperson for Raoul's office did not return a request for comment Friday, but last week he told reporters that he was "confident" the law would be upheld in court.

"You're not free to lie to people and to use deceptive practices and to sometimes take people away from where they were intending to go," Raoul said. "There's nothing in the First Amendment that protects that type of action."

Johnston has not yet set a date for a hearing on the merits of the case, but he did say the preliminary injunction applies to all of the approximately 100 crisis pregnancy centers in Illinois - not just the named plaintiffs.

The judge is also presiding over a long-awaited bench trial in a related case next month over a 2016 law aimed at health care providers - including individual practitioners and faith-based hospitals - who have moral objections to abortion. The law, if allowed to take effect, would require providers with such objections to give patients information about where to get an abortion, and a referral if requested.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a California law aimed at forcing crisis pregnancy centers to advise women about where to get an abortion.