The court said in two orders that it would not hear challenges to laws in Carbondale, Ill., and Englewood, N.J., that stop anti-abortion activists from “sidewalk counseling” people who are going to an abortion clinic.Both Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have taken up the case, but it needed the votes of four justices to be carried out,

Based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Hill v. Colorado in 2000, lower courts upheld the ordinances in both cities. That decision said that a similar law in Colorado did not violate the First Amendment.