Judge bars release of anti-abortion group's undercover videos
A federal judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction barring an anti-abortion group from releasing undercover videos taken at annual conferences of the National Abortion Federation.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco issued the injunction Friday in a lawsuit filed against the Center for Medical Progress, report the Recorder (sub. req.) and the New York Times.
Orrick ruled the Center’s First Amendment interest in releasing the videos was outweighed by the National Abortion Federation’s right to privacy, security and association.
Orrick said representatives for the Center for Medical Progress had used false identification and set up a phony corporation to gain access to meetings of the National Abortion Federation. Surreptitious videos taken at the meetings violated confidentiality agreements the officials had signed to gain access to the meetings, Orrick said. Those confidentiality agreements provided for injunctive relief in the event of a breach.
The Center had claimed the videos revealed criminal activity by NAF members in profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. Orrick didn’t think so. “I have reviewed the recordings,” Orrick wrote, “and find no evidence of criminal activity. And I am skeptical that exposing criminal activity was really defendants’ purpose, since they did not provide recordings to law enforcement.”
Orrick also disagreed that the Center had used widely accepted investigatory journalism techniques. The group’s projects “thus far have not been pieces of journalistic integrity, but misleadingly edited videos and unfounded assertions (at least with respect to the NAF materials) of criminal misconduct,” he wrote.
