The city of Beverly Hills has sought legal costs of more than $400,000 from abortion providers who accused officials of conspiring with extremists to abandon the opening of the clinic, which has already sparked new outrage in the case of seeing state protests and official state censorship.

Dozens of pro-choice protesters descended on Beverly Hills City Council last week called for abandonment of the pursuit of money spent in court battles with DuPont Clinic.

“What you guys are doing is very wrong,” said one activist Marissa Levin. “You should settle down with them.”

DuPont, which lost its lease months before it opened in 2023, is the only clinic in Southern California to offer procedures 24 weeks later, and has become a lightning bolt of criticism for opposition groups.

An investigation by the California Department of Justice found that city officials illegally interfered with the clinic. Court documents show that they have given permission to take over the road and that activists known as Abortion Holocaust survivors “notified” their landlord after threatening them with relentless protests.

No members of the anti-abortion group lived in Beverly Hills. Many people never stepped into Los Angeles. Their goal was to make Beverly Hills a test case of how they might continue to block abortion care, even in places that are politically popular.

“Through a fierce pressure campaign in which the city signed government authorities on both DuPont and the landlords of its building, the city has successfully made its mission to prevent DuPont from opening in Beverly Hills,” says California Atty. General Rob Bonta laid out and wrote the findings last October.

By that point, the city and the clinic had been fighting in court for a year, but DuPont in his 2023 claim that the city should pay to block its operations.

Sacramento lawmakers have moved to prevent similar conflicts, streamlining the abortion provider’s permitting processes and stripping cities of most power to limit them.

However, the change was too late for DuPont, who gave up on a plan to occupy space. Beverly Hills officials have argued that they did nothing wrong, but accepted new rules and state oversight.

“The city has fully cooperated with the Attorney General’s investigation,” Beverly Hills Mayor Leicester Friedman said in a press release. “We do not agree to the Attorney General’s complaint.”

The results ranked several Beverly Hills leaders. Rep. John Millish voted against accepting the state’s DOJ settlement, saying that Bonta was “a well-known, often stereotypical city and happens to be the only Jewish city in the state,” but he did not pursue a similar case in Fontana, where planned parent-child relationships were fired.

In December, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge threw out most of DuPont’s remaining claims, saying the city was protected by an initial amendment in all of its actions.

The clinic sued. The city has returned, with the next hearing scheduled for June, and filed an allegation of more than $400,000 in attorneys’ fees.

The move could be shortage of DuPont, losing more than $1 million to a clinic it never occupy, Andrea Grossman, one of Beverly Hills’ four founding members, says it turned the local skirmish into a national scandal.

Last week, she and her fellow “Abortion Jentas” upset the buildings of the Spanish colonial revival and pressured the city to let it go.

“Don’t be a tool for extremists, don’t make this your legacy,” Grossman begged the council, reading from a petition signed by 640 people during the March 18 meeting. “Do the right thing, take a legitimate victory and leave DuPont alone.”

One by one, the woman submitted it to the microphone to reflect the plea. Many people called for shared Jewish values.

“The claim that the city wants to harm DuPont financially is unfounded and simply isn’t true,” Friedman said. “We continue to seek fair and reasonable solutions.”

The activists were not impressed.

“You’re not telling the truth,” Jennifer Freeland said. “I am very happy to be able to see each of you with your eyes and say, ‘I am embarrassed to all of you.’ ”