A federal jury Thursday sided with the city of Grants Pass in finding that police haven’t used Oregon’s disorderly conduct statute to quash the free speech rights of street preachers protesting abortion.

Abolish Abortion Oregon in 2020 sued Grants Pass, alleging the city had harassed its members for years with threats of arrest to chill their freedom of speech and religion.

The Christian evangelists and anti-abortion activists travel the state “to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and to call for the abolition and criminalization of abortion throughout the United States,” according to the organization’s lawyers.

The group’s open-air street preachers attend various events in Grants Pass, including the First Friday monthly celebration of the arts and the Saturday Growers’ Market, and regularly preach outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on Northwest Franklin Boulevard, sometimes using bullhorns and electronic amplifiers.

Three of its members filed complaints with the city for threatening to arrest them on second-degree disorderly conduct allegations. Other received citations alleging they were obstructing traffic.

“You’ve heard a parade of the city’s witnesses who’ve complained about the content of a plaintiff’s speech when they’ve been on the stand. They suggested that some of what plaintiffs have to say is hurtful, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to say it,” attorney Ray D. Hacke, for the Pacific Justice Institute, said in his closing arguments on behalf of the preachers.

“To ensure that plaintiffs and others, including yourselves … can still exercise their voice in the city of Grants Pass without being silenced, I urge you to find for the plaintiffs,” Hacke told jurors.

The attorney for the city countered that its police officers appropriately enforced the law against the preachers for creating “unreasonable noise,” even if their speech was otherwise protected by the First Amendment.

The officers often were responding to complaints from business, said the city’s attorney, Robert E. Franz Jr.

“If the volume is disturbing business in Planned Parenthood, that’s a violation of disorderly conduct,” Franz told jurors.

Hacke responded in his rebuttal that the First Amendment “does not prohibit talking loudly” and that street preachers needed to raise their voices to “communicate with their target audience” because they were kept a “considerable distance away” from the Planned Parenthood clinic.

The verdict came at the end of a four-day trial in U.S. District Court in Medford before U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut.

Hacke said after the verdict that the plaintiffs don’t plan to appeal, and have worked out a deal with the city, which has agreed to waive its costs and fees as a result.

He said his clients also have reached a future agreement in principle with the city that will allow the preachers to continue to share their messages but without amplification outside Planned Parenthood, which is located beside other office space and businesses, Hacke said.

-- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.

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