Thomas More Society attorneys have asked the United States Supreme Court to take up the case of undercover journalist David Daleiden, whose 30-month investigation generated videos and evidence that spurred Congressional hearings, criminal referrals, policy and law changes, along with a vigorous national debate on the buying and selling of “baby body parts.” The Thomas More Society’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari seeks a reversal of lower court decisions that permanently prohibit Daleiden from publishing video he took of National Abortion Federation (“NAF”) trade shows and that awarded NAF over $6 million in attorney’s fees and costs.

The National Abortion Federation sued Daleiden in 2015, asking a California district court to suppress the videos recorded and produced by the investigative journalist and the nonprofit he founded, the Center for Medical Progress. The district court entered, and the court of appeals affirmed, a sweeping permanent injunction against the release of any of the over 500 hours of recordings at NAF conferences, without applying any level of First Amendment scrutiny.

Peter Breen, Thomas More Society Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation, explained that the petition describes how the lower courts ran roughshod over Daleiden’s First Amendment rights and made impermissible value judgments against Daleiden’s videos, claiming that there was minimal public interest in showing those videos.

[I think Daleiden has a real case here, and I also think he had no chance of making it until it got to the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit is still too progressive to distance itself from the core political dispute in the case. Daleiden had a real First Amendment purpose as an independent reporter to uncover how the abortion industry broke laws over the sale of fetal remains. Let’s see if four justices agree enough to grant cert. — Ed]