Welcome to the TMS Weekly Dispatch for March 24, 2025—with the latest news and updates from the front line, to keep you in-the-know on all things Thomas More Society. Here you’ll find a digest of our newest legal filings, noteworthy press, and anything in between.

‍Here’s a look back at the past week:

‍CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS WILL PAY $450,000 FOR VIOLATING PRO-LIFE SPEECH RIGHTS: The City of Minneapolis will pay a $450,000 attorney’s fees and costs award to Thomas More Society following a legal challenge and subsequent December 2024 victory against an anti-speech zone outside of Minneapolis’ Planned Parenthood. In December 2024, to settle the case, the city amended its buffer zone ordinance, which violated pro-life sidewalk counselors’ rights. “Politicians seeking to hinder and silence the efforts of pro-life sidewalk counselors should think twice—or it will cost them,” warned Peter Breen, TMS Executive Vice President & Head of Litigation. 

POLITICO – “CONSERVATIVE LEGAL POWERHOUSE”: Politico, the national political magazine, released last week a deep dive article looking at abortion-related legal battles across the country as the legal landscape stands in 2025. The article prominently featured the work of Thomas More Society on the front lines of the battle against anti-speech bubble and buffer zones: 

‍Carbondale, Illinois, Westchester, New York and Minneapolis have all rolled back laws restricting protests outside abortion clinics after challenges from the Thomas More Society — the conservative legal powerhouse that successfully lobbied Trump to pardon nearly two dozen people who violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

And while the Supreme Court recently declined to hear two more of the group’s lawsuits challenging clinic protections in Illinois and New Jersey, it has several cases in the pipeline and believes it can eventually convince the high court to rule that activists have an unrestrained right to stand in front of clinic doors, hold up signs, and tell patients and doctors that the procedure is akin to murder.

“We do feel like we are, to some extent, playing Whack-a-Mole,” Peter Breen, the head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, said. “But we’re going to play Whack-a-Mole until we get a result.” 

The article continued: 

But the moment Democratic officials enact clinic protections, the Thomas More Society and other conservative groups are challenging them as infringements on the First Amendment rights of anti-abortion activists...
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“It’s a very dangerous road to go down, whatever your position on the issue,” he said of the state and local clinic protections. “If you believe in the public’s right to use the sidewalk to leaflet, to express ideas, you shouldn’t want to restrict anybody’s speech.” 

Read the full POLITICO article here.

‍FEDERAL JUDGE DISMISSES CHALLENGE AGAINST SAN DIEGO BUBBLE ZONE: A California federal judge has dismissed Thomas More Society’s legal challenge against an no-speech zone outside of Planned Parenthood in San Diego—relying heavily on the wrongly decided Supreme Court decision, Hill v. Colorado. The challenge dismissal comes just weeks after Justice Clarence Thomas’ scathing critique of anti-speech zones in the Court’s dissent in Coalition Life v. Carbondale. Last month, The U.S. Supreme Court decided to not hear the Thomas More Society appeal on behalf of Coalition Life, challenging Hill and the constitutionality of no-speech zones that target pro-life speech. 

“Following our repudiation in Dobbs, I do not see what is left of Hill. Yet, lower courts continue to feel bound by it,” wrote Justice Thomas in his dissent. “For now, we leave lower courts to sort out what, if anything, is left of Hill’s reasoning, all while constitutional rights hang in the balance.”

Bearing out the Justice’s observation, federal courts have once again proven themselves still shackled by Hill’s erroneous legal precedent, the district court writing in its decision: “Hill remains good law, and this Court is bound by its holdings.” Thomas More Society will soon appeal the ruling.

‍FIFTH CIRCUIT APPEALS COURT VICTORY FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, COAST GUARD SERVICEMEN: On March 20, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned a lower court’s dismissal in Jackson v. Noem, ruling that a case brought by Thomas More Society on behalf of Coast Guard service members challenging the Coast Guard’s now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccination mandate remains alive. This victory signals a movement towards renewed protection for service members and civilians who face pressure to violate their consciences. The case now continues at the district court level as Thomas More Society seeks justice on the service members’ behalf.

‍NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER – MOM SAYS FEDS YANKED SECURITY STATUS AFTER COMPLAINTS ABOUT ‘POLYSEXUAL’ POSTERS AT SCHOOL: Thomas More Society is suing the Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, and New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, for “threat-tagging” and monitoring New Jersey mother Angela Reading after she expressed concern about inappropriate posters displayed at her 7-year-old daughter’s school. The National Catholic Register reports: 

Reading, whose lawyers describe her as a devout Christian, says the agencies and certain individuals violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion because she publicly opposed what she considers inappropriate material at the school. 

NORTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT PROTECTS PARENTS’ RIGHTS: On March 21, 2025, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled to protect parents’ rights in Happel v. Guilford County Board of Education. At issue in this case was 14-year-old school’s medical provider vaccinated him against COVID-19 against his and his parents’ wishes and without parental consent. Despite his protests and lack of parental approval, clinic workers administered the vaccine, prompting allegations of "egregious" conduct. The lower courts dismissed the case, citing federal preemption under the PREP Act, which grants immunity for claims related to vaccine administration. 

Tyler Brooks, TMS Senior Counsel, represented a group of North Carolina state lawmakers in a friend-of-the-court brief to the NC Supreme Court, arguing on behalf of the lawmakers in defense of parents’ rights. The Thomas More Society friend-of-the-court brief opened by outlining the central issues at stake: 

Love the COVID-19 vaccines or despise them. Either way those sentiments are irrelevant to resolution of the legal questions here presented. On its underlying merits, this case instead offers up two interrelated questions that are far more foundational to our republican form of government: (1) whether, as this Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have repeatedly held, parents have a fundamental constitutional right to direct the care, custody, and control of their children; and (2) whether a state can have the very local governmental entities it has created commandeered by the federal government to serve ends directly contrary to the express statutory directives of the Legislature.