Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area Seeks Federal Court Order Allowing Aurora Health Center to Open as Scheduled on September 18th
ArchPundit
Says City’s actions to block opening motivated by politics, not law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 13, 2007
CHICAGO – Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area today asked a federal court to allow its new health center in Aurora to open as scheduled on September 18, saying the City of Aurora has no legal basis for blocking the opening and that its revocation of a temporary operating permit is motivated solely by political opposition to the constitutionally protected right to abortion services.
The request filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago asks the Court to issue an injunction barring the City of Aurora from preventing the scheduled September 18 opening. The City has revoked a temporary occupancy permit issued on August 16 pending completion of a review of the permitting process that won’t likely be completed until after September 18.
“Aurora’s actions … are not related to any legitimate municipal concern, but instead are motivated solely by political opposition to the fact the Planned Parenthood provides abortion services as part of a broad range of health care services for its patients,” the filing states. “Accordingly, Planned Parenthood seeks injunctive relief … to prevent Aurora from continuing to deprive Planned Parenthood’s constitutionally protected right to equal protection under the law.”
The City of Aurora’s refusal to allow Planned Parenthood to open pending a review of the permitting process is “both undefined in scope and indefinite in nature,” argues PP/CA. Without intervention by the Court, “Planned Parenthood may never be able to operate its facility in Aurora.”
As to claims by Planned Parenthood opponents that the organization “misled” the City about the type of medical facility it would operate, today’s filing argues that those accusations are factually and legally wrong – and irrelevant.
“The City of Aurora’s fig leaf argument that it was ‘misled’ about the nature of the services that Planned Parenthood intends to provide at its facility is neither factually nor legally persuasive,” PP/CA says.
As a factual matter, the complaint notes that Planned Parenthood had publicly announced its intention to operate a medical facility providing a full range of reproductive services – including birth control, family planning counseling and abortions – in a front-page Chicago Tribune story in late July, well before City issued the temporary occupancy permit on August 16.
“Only when protestors began appearing at the Planned Parenthood facility in late August and testifying at public hearings before the City of Aurora, did the status of Planned Parenthood’s facility change,” PP/CA argues.
Furthermore, PP/CA issued more than $8 million in tax-exempt bonds through the Illinois Development Finance Authority in May 2007, a process that required extensive documentation and notices published in newspapers. In those disclosures, PP/CA disclosed that the named developer of the facility, Gemini Office Development, was affiliated with PP/CA.
Finally, the complaint points out that architectural drawings provided to Aurora during the permitting process displayed not only the surgical rooms in the facility, but also the security measures built into its design. These included bullet-proof drywall and bullet-proof glass for the entry lobby.
“None of this was hidden from the City in any way,” the filing says.
On legal grounds, Aurora’s implied claim that it was somehow misled are even less persuasive, PP/CA argues. It cites a 2001 federal case in New Hampshire that parallels the Aurora situation, in which the court issued an injunction blocking the city of Manchester, N.H. from preventing the opening of a Planned Parenthood clinic after public criticism.
In that case, the court noted: “If the issuing authority was ‘misled’ as to the identity of the prospective tenant who would be providing medical services at the site, that identity would have been irrelevant to any impartial decision … {T]hat the proposed tenant proposed to engage in constitutionally protected activities in providing medical services – such as providing abortion and contraception counseling and services – would have been equally irrelevant.”
