A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a lawsuit brought by a religious advocacy group challenging a Pittsburgh ordinance that establishes a 15-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon last year ruled against Verona abortion protester Nikki Bruni and four other women represented by Alliance Defending Freedom who said the buffer zone infringed on their First Amendment rights because it kept them from conducting “sidewalk counseling” to women entering the Planned Parenthood facility Downtown to have abortions.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Bissoon and said the case will return to her on the First Amendment claim.

“The speech at issue is core political speech entitled to the maximum protection afforded by the First Amendment,” the circuit judges said.

The circuit had previously upheld Pittsburgh’s buffer zone law in a 2009 case but said that a Supreme Court decision in a 2014 Massachusetts case striking down a state law that banned protests within 35 feet of clinics has “altered the constitutional analysis.”

The circuit judges said the 2014 case instructs that the legality of buffer zone laws depends on the facts of each case and that some zones may be upheld while others are not. The judges said they didn’t have enough facts to make a decision.

“We express no view on the ultimate merits of the plaintiffs’ claims in this case,” the judges said, but ruled that they will vacate the dismissal of the free speech claims “so that they may be considered after appropriate development of a factual record.”

Matt Bowman, an Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer who argued the case before the 3rd Circuit last year, hailed the ruling as a victory. “The government cannot muzzle speech just because pro-abortion politicians and special interests demand it,” he said in a statement. “Pittsburgh’s sidewalk counselors are now entitled to their day in court, and the city cannot justify squelching their peaceful offers of help to women.”

The city noted, however, that the circuit did not rule on the merits of the lawsuit claims. “The 3rd Circuit’s ruling just means the case will proceed for now,” Assistant City Solicitor Matthew McHale said in a statement, “and there will be other opportunities for the city to prove the ordinance should be upheld as constitutional.”

Torsten Ove: tove@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1504.

First Published: June 1, 2016, 7:18 p.m.
Updated: June 1, 2016, 8:00 p.m.