PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – Maine’s attorney general is suing a protester who she says yelled so loudly outside a Planned Parenthood facility that he disrupted health care services there.
Attorney General Janet Mills filed a complaint under the state’s civil rights act against 26-year-old Brian Ingalls, of Lisbon. She says he violated the rights of patients at the Portland facility Oct. 23 when the sound of his voice directed to the second floor disrupted counseling sessions between staff and patients.
A complaint says a police officer warned Ingalls to stop yelling so loudly, but he didn’t.
Ingalls’ attorney calls it a “baseless lawsuit” filed to circumvent a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling about protester buffer zones.
Mills says Ingalls had the right to protest but not to disrupt.