Nuremberg Files
The Nuremberg Files refers to a controversial online initiative launched in the 1990s by a group of anti-abortion activists known as the American Coalition of Life Advocates (ACLA). This website published the names and addresses of healthcare providers who performed abortions, accompanied by graphic imagery and rhetoric that suggested these individuals were akin to war criminals, evoking the historical Nuremberg Trials of Nazi officials. Although the site did not explicitly call for violence, it was associated with a spike in violent acts against abortion providers, including murders and bombings during that period.
The legal ramifications arose when Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the ACLA for their actions, resulting in a significant judgment against the group, which was later overturned on constitutional grounds. This legal battle highlighted the tension between free speech and the potential for incitement to violence, as articulated in various Supreme Court rulings. The Nuremberg Files has since re-emerged online in modified formats, continuing to provoke debate over the limits of political expression and the responsibilities that come with it.
Nuremberg Files
Description: In 1999, Planned Parenthood won a large civil judgment against an antiabortion organization because of its provocative listings of specific names and addresses of abortion providers over the Internet, but a federal appeals court overruled the judgment as a violation of the freedom of expression protected by First Amendment.
Relevant amendment: First
Significance: The controversial ruling of the appellate court, Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Activists (2001), held that the First Amendment protected a right to encourage violence against specific individuals unless the message was both intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action.
In the early 1990’s, an organization of antiabortion activists called the American Coalition of Life Advocates (ACLA) published the names and addresses of doctors and staff providing abortion services. The lists encouraged a few fanatics within the group’s audience to use violence against particular individuals. In 1997, the ACLA began sponsoring sites on the Worldwide Web, including the “Nuremberg Files,” which invoked the name of the German city where Nazi criminals had been tried for crimes against humanity after World War II. The sites, which were designed by Neil Horsley, did not explicitly advocate harm to the 225 listed providers, but they included lurid illustrations of dead fetuses and suggested that concerned citizens might have to resort to extra-legal means to stop the “baby butchers.” Although Horsley denied that the sites were intended to be “hit lists,” he declared approvingly that providers should know that pro-life activists were ready to “blow their brains out.” When listed providers were killed, the Web site of the Nuremberg Files lined out their names, and if when providers were wounded, their names were grayed out. During the 1990’s, at least seven murders and seventeen attempted murders of providers occurred, as well as at least five bombings and thirty cases of arson at abortion clinics.
In 1995, before the ACLA site was established, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers brought a civil suit against the ACLA under a federal statute, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. In 1999, a jury trial took place in Portland, Oregon, and the plaintiffs won a judgment of $109 million. Because of the judgment, the Nuremberg Files and similar Web sites were temporarily removed from the Internet. The ACLA appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears federal appeals in nine western states.
On March 28, 2001, a three-judge panel unanimously vacated the judgment as an unconstitutional restraint on the ACLA’s freedom of expression. Speaking for the panel, Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski explained: “Political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future by an unrelated third party.” Kozinski noted that the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) had ruled that communications with a political message were protected unless a speaker intended to incite imminent lawless behavior and the speech was likely to produce such an outcome. He also quoted extensively from National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Caliborn Hardware Co. (1982), in which the Supreme Court had overturned a judgment against NAACP leaders for threatening violence against African Americans not participating in an economic boycott. Even though violence against nonparticipants had occurred, it did not take place immediately after the provocative communications.
Many observers—both liberal and conservative—were outraged by the three-judge panel’s ruling. Senator Charles Schumer and other authors of the relevant federal statute requested a review of the ruling by all eleven judges on the appeals court. On October 4, 2001, the court announced that the eleven judges would hear the case, but did not announce a date. Whatever the outcome of the review, it was entirely possible that the controversial case would have to be decided by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Nuremberg Files, in modified form, reappeared on the Internet.