In Hill v. Colorado, decided June 28, 2000, the Supreme Court voted 6–3 to uphold a Colorado law that made it a petty offense to knowingly approach within eight feet of another person, without consent, to leaflet, display a sign, or engage in oral protest, education, or counseling, when that approach happens within 100 feet of a healthcare facility’s entrance.1Justia. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000) The majority treated the statute as a content-neutral regulation of where and how speech happens, not a restriction on what could be said. The decision remains binding precedent, but a later ruling has narrowed how far legislatures can push its logic.
The Law the Court Was Reviewing
Colorado Revised Statutes § 18-9-122(3) prohibited a person from knowingly approaching within eight feet of another individual, without that person’s consent, for the purpose of passing a leaflet or handbill, displaying a sign, or engaging in oral protest, education, or counseling.2Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. Hill v. Colorado – Syllabus The rule applied only inside a 100-foot radius of any entrance to a healthcare facility.
The definition of “health-care facility” was broad, covering any entity licensed, certified, or otherwise authorized to administer medical treatment in Colorado.3FindLaw. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 18 Section 18-9-122 Hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices all fell within it. Protests outside abortion clinics drove the legislation, but the statute itself was not limited to those facilities.
Leila Hill and other petitioners who regularly counseled patients outside healthcare facilities challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, arguing that public sidewalks receive the highest level of speech protection under American law. They also raised a vagueness challenge, contending that a person in a moving crowd could not reasonably know when they had crossed the eight-foot line.
Why the Court Upheld the Statute
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices O’Connor, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer.1Justia. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000) The Court held that the statute did not ban any speech; it regulated the manner and location of certain approaches.4Cornell Law Institute. Hill v. Colorado – Opinion That framing was decisive, because it placed the law inside the familiar time, place, and manner test rather than the strict scrutiny reserved for content-based restrictions.
Under that test, a regulation stands if it is content-neutral, narrowly tailored to a significant government interest, and leaves open enough alternative channels for communication.
Content Neutrality
The majority found the statute applied to every speaker regardless of message. An anti-abortion leaflet, a union flyer, and a pizza coupon were all treated the same. The restriction attached to a form of conduct — approaching a stranger without consent — not to a viewpoint.
The Government Interest
Colorado’s interest, the Court said, was protecting people entering medical facilities from unwanted confrontation during a vulnerable moment. Stevens invoked what he called the “right to be let alone,” quoting Justice Brandeis’s description of it as “the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”1Justia. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000)
Narrow Tailoring
Eight feet, the Court reasoned, is normal conversational distance.2Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. Hill v. Colorado – Syllabus A speaker could still be seen and heard clearly. A stationary speaker could hold a sign as people walked by. Leaflets could be offered if the recipient stopped or agreed to the approach. And the restriction only operated in a small area near facility entrances, leaving the rest of the public sidewalk untouched.
The vagueness challenge also failed. Because the statute required a person to knowingly approach, accidental brushes with the eight-foot line in a shifting crowd would not qualify. The mental-state requirement, the Court concluded, gave the law enough clarity.
The Dissents
Justice Scalia wrote a dissent joined by Justice Thomas. Justice Kennedy filed a separate dissent. Both attacked the majority’s reasoning at its foundation.
Scalia’s Objection
Scalia argued that the statute was content-based on its face. It named the restricted activities: “oral protest, education, or counseling.” Approaching a stranger to say hello or ask for directions was legal; approaching to educate or counsel was not. A law that singles out those categories, in his view, discriminates by content and should have to survive strict scrutiny, which this one would not.1Justia. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000)
He also warned that requiring consent before a close approach handed pedestrians a veto over speech they didn’t want to hear. The majority rejected that reading directly, writing that the statute “confers no such censorial power on the pedestrian.”4Cornell Law Institute. Hill v. Colorado – Opinion
Kennedy’s Objection
Kennedy called the statute “a textbook example of a law which is content based” and said the ruling “contradicts more than a half century of well-established First Amendment principles.” His practical concern was that the law “forecloses peaceful leafletting” on public sidewalks, historically the most protected forum for citizen speech.1Justia. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000) He also argued the law was viewpoint-based in effect, because it was written in response to one side of the abortion debate, and said the decision conflicted with the Court’s own emphasis on open discourse about abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Is Hill v. Colorado Still Good Law?
Yes, but with real limits. The Colorado statute created what courts call a “floating” buffer zone: the eight-foot bubble followed each pedestrian as they moved through the 100-foot area. The Court’s willingness to uphold it rested partly on how small that bubble was.
That reasoning was tested in 2014 in McCullen v. Coakley, where the Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law creating a 35-foot fixed buffer zone around reproductive healthcare facilities.5Justia. McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U.S. 464 (2014) In practice, that fixed zone excluded speakers from stretches of sidewalk and driveway ranging from 56 to more than 93 feet. The McCullen majority agreed with Hill that such laws can be treated as content-neutral, but found the Massachusetts version failed narrow tailoring because the state had never tried less restrictive alternatives. The majority pointedly did not address whether Hill should be limited or overruled.
Justice Scalia, joined by Kennedy and Thomas, wrote a concurrence urging that Hill be overruled outright, saying it “contradicts First Amendment jurisprudence.” The majority declined.
The result is that Hill still stands, but the ground beneath it has shifted. The eight-foot floating zone that Colorado defended represents roughly the minimum type of buffer the Court has approved. Anything broader, especially a fixed exclusion zone around an entrance, now has to clear the far tougher narrow-tailoring bar that McCullen set. Legislatures drafting clinic-access laws today have to satisfy both decisions, and lower courts reviewing those laws have grown more skeptical of restrictions that sweep beyond what Hill itself blessed.