McCullen v. Coakley
E176639
First Amendment case
United States Supreme Court case
abortion-related legal case
freedom of speech case
McCullen v. Coakley is a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down Massachusetts’ abortion-clinic buffer zone law as violating the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| McCullen v. Coakley canonical | 2 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1538846 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: McCullen v. Coakley Context triple: [Assembly Clause, usedInCase, McCullen v. Coakley]
-
A.
Cantwell v. Connecticut
Cantwell v. Connecticut is a 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case that first applied the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause to the states, striking down a state law that improperly restricted religious proselytizing.
-
B.
Milliken v. Bradley
Milliken v. Bradley is a landmark 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited the scope of school desegregation remedies by ruling that courts could not impose cross-district busing plans absent proof of interdistrict segregation.
-
C.
DeBoer v. Snyder
DeBoer v. Snyder was a federal court case challenging Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban that became one of the key cases consolidated into the landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
-
D.
Chiafalo v. Washington
Chiafalo v. Washington is a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case that unanimously upheld states’ authority to penalize or replace “faithless electors” who do not vote in line with their state’s popular vote in presidential elections.
-
E.
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee is a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision that significantly narrowed the scope of federal protections against voting discrimination, particularly under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: McCullen v. Coakley Target entity description: McCullen v. Coakley is a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down Massachusetts’ abortion-clinic buffer zone law as violating the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
-
A.
Cantwell v. Connecticut
Cantwell v. Connecticut is a 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case that first applied the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause to the states, striking down a state law that improperly restricted religious proselytizing.
-
B.
Milliken v. Bradley
Milliken v. Bradley is a landmark 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited the scope of school desegregation remedies by ruling that courts could not impose cross-district busing plans absent proof of interdistrict segregation.
-
C.
DeBoer v. Snyder
DeBoer v. Snyder was a federal court case challenging Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban that became one of the key cases consolidated into the landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
-
D.
Chiafalo v. Washington
Chiafalo v. Washington is a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case that unanimously upheld states’ authority to penalize or replace “faithless electors” who do not vote in line with their state’s popular vote in presidential elections.
-
E.
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee
Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee is a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision that significantly narrowed the scope of federal protections against voting discrimination, particularly under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (51)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
First Amendment case
ⓘ
United States Supreme Court case ⓘ abortion-related legal case ⓘ freedom of speech case ⓘ |
| citation |
134 S. Ct. 2518
ⓘ
189 L. Ed. 2d 502 ⓘ 573 U.S. 464 ⓘ |
| concurrenceBy |
Anthony M. Kennedy
ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
Antonin Scalia ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Antonin Scalia
Clarence Thomas ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Clarence Thomas
Samuel A. Alito Jr. ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
|
| constitutionalProvisionInterpreted | First Amendment to the United States Constitution ⓘ |
| court | Supreme Court of the United States ⓘ |
| decisionDate | 2014-06-26 ⓘ |
| decisionType | unanimous judgment ⓘ |
| docketNumber | 12-1168 ⓘ |
| governmentInterestAsserted |
orderly movement on public sidewalks and streets
ⓘ
public safety ⓘ unimpeded access to reproductive health care facilities ⓘ |
| holding |
Massachusetts’ 35-foot abortion-clinic buffer zone law violates the First Amendment
ⓘ
The law burdens substantially more speech than necessary to achieve the Commonwealth’s asserted interests ⓘ The statute is not narrowly tailored to serve significant governmental interests in public safety and patient access ⓘ |
| issue | whether fixed buffer zones around abortion clinics violate free speech rights on public sidewalks ⓘ |
| joinedMajority |
John G. Roberts Jr.
ⓘ
surface form:
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
Anthony M. Kennedy ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
Antonin Scalia ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Antonin Scalia
Clarence Thomas ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Clarence Thomas
Elena Kagan ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Elena Kagan
Ruth Bader Ginsburg ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Samuel A. Alito Jr. ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Sonia Sotomayor ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Stephen G. Breyer ⓘ
surface form:
Justice Stephen G. Breyer
|
| jurisdiction |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| lawChallenged | Massachusetts Reproductive Health Care Facilities Act (as amended in 2007) ⓘ |
| lawFeatureChallenged | 35-foot fixed buffer zones around entrances, exits, and driveways of reproductive health care facilities ⓘ |
| lowerCourtDecision | affirmed constitutionality of Massachusetts buffer zone law ⓘ |
| opinionOfTheCourtBy |
John G. Roberts Jr.
ⓘ
surface form:
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
|
| originatingCourt | United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ⓘ |
| originatingJurisdiction |
Massachusetts
ⓘ
surface form:
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
|
| petitioner | Eleanor McCullen ⓘ |
| relatedCase | Hill v. Colorado ⓘ |
| relatedTopic | content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions ⓘ |
| respondent | Martha Coakley ⓘ |
| respondentOffice |
Massachusetts Attorney General
ⓘ
surface form:
Attorney General of Massachusetts
|
| result | Massachusetts buffer zone statute struck down ⓘ |
| speechLocation | public sidewalks outside abortion clinics ⓘ |
| speechTypeInvolved | sidewalk counseling ⓘ |
| standardApplied | narrow tailoring requirement for time, place, and manner restrictions ⓘ |
| subsequentImpact | limited states’ ability to use large fixed buffer zones around abortion clinics ⓘ |
| term | October Term 2013 ⓘ |
| vote | 9-0 on invalidating the law ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: McCullen v. Coakley Description of subject: McCullen v. Coakley is a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down Massachusetts’ abortion-clinic buffer zone law as violating the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.