Beverly Hills seeks $400,000 in legal fees from abortion provider blocked from opening
The city of Beverly Hills is seeking more than $400,000 in legal fees from an abortion provider who accused officials of colluding with extremists to scuttle the opening of a clinic, drawing new outrage in a case that has already seen national outcry and official state censure.
Dozens of pro-choice protesters descended on the Beverly Hills City Council last week demanding city leaders abandon the pursuit of money spent fighting in court against the DuPont Clinic.
'What you guys are doing is so wrong,' said Marissa Levin, one of the activists. 'You should just settle with them.'
DuPont, which lost its lease months before it could open in 2023, would have been the only clinic in Southern California offering procedures after 24 weeks, making it a lightning rod of criticism for anti-abortion groups.
A California Department of Justice investigation found city officials illegally interfered with the clinic. Court documents show they waylaid permits and put its landlord 'on notice' after activists calling themselves Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust threatened them with relentless protest.
No members of the anti-abortion group lived in Beverly Hills. Many had never set foot in Los Angeles before. Their stated goal was to make Beverly Hills a test case for how they might continue to thwart abortion care even in places where it is politically popular.
'Through an intense pressure campaign in which the City exerted its governmental authority on both DuPont and the landlord of its building, the City succeeded in its mission of preventing DuPont from opening in Beverly Hills,' California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta wrote, laying out the investigation's findings last October.
By that point, the city and the clinic had been fighting in court for a year, with DuPont alleging in a 2023 claim that the city should pay for blocking its operation.
Sacramento lawmakers moved to prevent similar disputes, streamlining the permit process for abortion providers and stripping cities of most power to restrict them.
But the changes came too late for DuPont, which has given up plans to occupy the space. Beverly Hills officials maintain they did nothing wrong, but have accepted new rules and state oversight.
'The City cooperated fully with the Attorney General's investigation,' said Beverly Hills Mayor Lester Friedman in a press release. 'We disagree with the allegations in the Attorney General's complaint.'
The outcome rankled some Beverly Hills leaders. Councilmember John Mirisch voted against accepting the state DOJ settlement, saying Bonta had singled out 'a well-known, often stereotyped city, which also happens to be the state's only Jewish-majority city' while failing to pursue a similar case in Fontana, where a Planned Parenthood came under fire.
In December, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge tossed out most of DuPont's remaining claims, saying the city was protected by the first amendment in all but a few of its actions.
The clinic appealed. The city struck back, filing a motion for more than $400,000 in attorney's fees, with the next hearing scheduled in June.
The move could hobble DuPont, which lost more than $1 million renovating a clinic it will never occupy, said Andrea Grossman, one of four founding members of Beverly Hills for Choice, whose advocacy turned the local skirmish into a national scandal.
Last week, she and her fellow 'abortion yentas' mobbed the Spanish Colonial Revival building to pressure the city to just let it go.
'Do not be the tool of extremists, do not let this be your legacy,' Grossman implored the council, reading from a petition signed by 640 people during the March 18 meeting. 'Do the right thing, take the legal victory and leave DuPont alone.'
One by one, women filed up to the microphone to echo that plea. Many invoked their shared Jewish values.
'Any claim that the city desires to financially harm DuPont is groundless and simply not true,' said Friedman. 'We continue to seek a fair and reasonable resolution.'
The activists were unimpressed.
'You're not telling the truth,' said Jennifer Freeland. 'I'm so glad to look at each one of you in the eye and say, 'Shame on all of you.''
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
European rabbis cancel Sarajevo event after minister's boycott call
The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) has cancelled its upcoming meeting in Sarajevo after a minister called for a boycott of the event, the organization's president said on Wednesday. Calls by Adnan Delić, the labour minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), led the hotel hosting the event to cancel the booking, CER President and Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt said. The FBiH is one of the two political entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, alongside the Republika Srpska. In a post on Facebook, Delić denounced Israel's role in the war in the Gaza Strip and demanded that Sarajevo not become a "venue for supporting genocide." "We have been made unwelcome, and this last-minute, ministerial boycott of Jewish European citizens, dedicated to purely to promoting Jewish life in Europe and furthering dialogue and democracy across the continent, is disgraceful," Goldschmidt wrote in a statement. He thanked the German city of Munich for agreeing at the last minute to host the meeting, planned for June 16-18. During the Bosnian war from 1992-95, 11,000 citizens lost their lives in Sarajevo, when the city was besieged by Serbian troops. The war killed almost 100,000 people and displaced 2 million. Today, Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to large populations of Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Delić wrote that the CER had misused Sarajevo as a place "to send a message legitimizing the occupation and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people." Goldschmidt rejected this, emphasizing that CER events promote dialogue and calling the cancellation "Sarajevo's loss." The CER has around 1,000 members and 800 active rabbis in its ranks. According to its own statements, it advocates for the religious rights of Jews in Europe and is committed to religious freedom and interfaith dialogue with other faiths.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Opinion: First Lady Melania and Pope Leo are right — it's 'unum' time
In a season of tragedy and division, two powerful voices — one from the Vatican, one from the White House — reached for the same ancient word: Unum. Last month, after the horrific shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., First Lady Melania Trump offered her condolences by quoting our national motto: E Pluribus Unum — 'Out of many, one.' Days earlier, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, delivered his inaugural message with a similar phrase etched into his papal crest: In Illo Uno Unum — 'In the One, One.' And with the horrifying attack on Jewish families in Boulder, Colorado, earlier this month, the same call to unity remains. These aren't just old, dusty Latin words. They were calls to unity in a time when America — and the world — feels dangerously divided. We are living through a season of immense high conflict, spilling over into hate-fueled violence. But from Rome to D.C., this month reminded us that Unum — unity — is not just a relic. It's a lifeline. Let's be honest: unity sounds soft. It can feel like wishful thinking. But today, invoking unity is a bold act. It takes guts to say, 'We still belong to each other,' especially when everything around us screams otherwise. I see signs of that courage every day. In an exhausted middle of Americans who are tired of the yelling, the blaming and the endless outrage. They're not perfect — but they're trying. Trying to build bridges instead of burning them. Trying to find common ground without giving up their convictions. That's the heart of Unum. It doesn't erase conflict or pretend we all agree. It's not utopia. It's the hard, daily work of choosing coexistence over chaos. Unum means Jewish and Muslim Americans grieving side-by-side. It means a First Lady who grew up Catholic in Slovenia invoking a motto that speaks across American synagogues, mosques and churches alike. It means a Pope who spent years in Latin America calling for peace — not as an abstract dream, but as an urgent task. And in Washington last week, that task was made painfully real. The shooting near the Israeli Embassy wasn't just another violent act. It was a national alarm. A young couple was killed. Jewish Americans and foreign diplomats had gathered at a museum dedicated to the hard work of remembering history and resisting hate. They came in peace. They fled in terror. If that doesn't shake us, what will? I mourn every loss — from D.C. to Gaza. As a former diplomat and humanitarian worker, I've seen the cost of war up close. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is heartbreaking: tens of thousands dead, aid blocked, civilians suffering. Hostages still not home. Israelis and Palestinians alike living in fear and grief. But pain doesn't have to harden us. It can humble us. It can move us to action — not vengeance. In moments like these, we face two temptations. One is despair: to give up, to believe the divisions are too deep. The other is rage: to blame, punish and retreat into our tribes. Neither will save us. The harder path — the braver one — is to build bridges anyway. Pope Leo XIV said it plainly: 'Be bridgebuilders, peace seekers, and companions on the journey.' That's not just a prayer. It's a plan. Because in a world driven by algorithms that divide and outrage that sells, choosing Unum is radical. It means staying at the table when you'd rather storm out. It means believing that pluralism — people of different faiths, races, beliefs and stories — can still build a shared life. You could say that in an interfaith nation like America, that is our common wealth — a society where deep differences don't divide us, they deepen us. The First Lady's words last month were not just a prayer — they were a call to action. Quoting our centuries-old motto E Pluribus Unum — 'Out of many, one' — was a reminder that belonging isn't partisan. It's American. It always has been. So let's hold on to that fragile hope. Let's say Unum again — and mean it.
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Left-wing antisemitism is swiftly surpassing the right
With the smoke still in the air from an Egyptian Muslim's terror attack that set non-violent Jewish protesters on fire in Boulder, Colorado, there's finally a critical mass of concern about growing violent antisemitic hate in America from somewhere other than conservatives. For my whole life antisemitism has been a fact of life for conservatives like me. Cranky retirees and bald-headed young people alike espoused conspiracy theories and hatred of Jews from the fringes of our political world. People like William F. Buckley fought to keep them out of the mainstream, but millions of conservatives voted for vile anti-Jewish haters like Pat Buchanan. So in 2018 it didn't come as a surprise that the man nearly my age who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was a right-wing crank who frequented Nazi-friendly social media sites like Gab and idolized the fringey Proud Boys. A couple years later when the Biden administration targeted the right for special attention from the Justice Department and the FBI for the potential violence of homegrown extremists, I didn't really object. Yes, there was left-wing violence like the 2017 attack on Republican congressmen at a bipartisan baseball game by a loopy old Bernie Sanders supporter, but it didn't seem like there was the same cesspool of violent hate on the left as there was on the right. That is changing. It turns out that while the Biden administration was on its politically convenient crusade against right-wing haters, they (and I) missed a parallel antisemitic culture of hate growing and metastasizing on the left. Left-wing extremism The Combat Hate Foundation, which takes reports of antisemitic incidents and categorizes them according to ideological motivation, found more than a 320% increase in left-wing antisemitic incidents from 2023 to 2024. 'The left-wing antisemitic movement has evolved into a global force,' the group writes. 'Radicalized social movements, media disinformation campaigns, and efforts to target Jewish communities under the guise of anti-Israel activism have primarily fueled this increase,' the group said. The recent murder of a soon-to-be engaged couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum is an example of such left-wing antisemitism. The alleged killer, who shouted 'Free, free Palestine!' after his attack, has ties to left-wing socialist, anti-war and anti-racist groups. Most of the nearly 4,329 incidents of left-wing antisemitism in 2024 were not so brutal, primarily involving hate speech or vandalism and not violence. Combat Hate Foundation The Combat Hate Foundation, which is funded by a donor who also funds Republican political campaigns, has a record of calling out antisemitism on both the right and the left. Indeed, the latest report says violence is more common in right-wing attacks, but the number of such events fell by half in 2024 to 461 as left-wing incidents exploded into view with campus chants of 'Globalize the intifada,' a common refrain that implies a tolerance for violence. The Combat Hate Foundation is not alone in its concern. The more-traditional and left-leaning Anti-Defamation League also raised alarms in a 2020 email about antisemitism on the left, including among Black Lives Matter leaders. The most recent attack in Boulder stems from the third font of antisemitism, radical Islam. The Egyptian-born attacker, who allegedly planned his atrocity for more than a year, carried his hatred for Jews from the Middle East, where it is both common and government-backed, to a new home in America where he overstayed a visa and then sought refugee status. This source of antisemitism, too, is rising, according to the Combat Hate Foundation. America has been a safe home for Jews for centuries. It is tragic that they now face the old threat from the right along with rising threats on the left and from Islamists who benefit from very American religious tolerance that they refuse to share with Jews.
