The U.S. Supreme Court case Hill v. Colorado (1999) revolved around a Colorado statute that prohibited individuals from approaching within eight feet of another person without their consent, for the purpose of passing leaflets or engaging in protest, education or counseling near health care facilities. The petitioners, anti-abortion activists who regularly engaged in sidewalk counseling outside clinics, argued that this law violated their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly by creating "floating buffer zones". However, the court upheld the statute with a 6-3 decision stating it served significant government interests including protecting citizens' right to seek medical services unimpeded and ensuring public safety on streets and sidewalks. The majority opinion held that these restrictions were content-neutral as they did not refer to any message or viewpoint but only regulated where certain speech could occur; hence they did not violate First Amendment protections.

In the dissenting opinion for Hill v. Colorado, Justice Scalia argued that the majority's decision was an infringement on free speech rights protected by the First Amendment. He contended that this case did not involve conduct but rather pure speech and therefore should have been subject to strict scrutiny review, which it would not survive. He also criticized the majority's use of a balancing test in determining whether or not there had been a violation of constitutional rights, arguing instead that such tests were inappropriate when dealing with fundamental freedoms like free speech. Furthermore, he disagreed with their interpretation of past cases used as precedent in making their ruling and felt they had misapplied them to justify upholding restrictions on protestors' activities near healthcare facilities providing abortions.