Idaho can enforce ban on aid to minors who leave state for abortions, with one exception, 9th Circuit says
A federal appeals court has blocked just one provision of Idaho’s abortion-trafficking law that bans aid to minors getting abortions. (Image from Shutterstock)
A federal appeals court has blocked just one provision of Idaho’s abortion-trafficking law that bans aid to minors getting abortions.
In a 2-1 decision Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco ruled that Idaho can’t ban the recruitment of minors for abortions, but other provisions of the law can be enforced.
Law360, Reuters and Bloomberg Law have coverage.
The Idaho law bars adults from recruiting, harboring or transporting minors to obtain an abortion with the intent to conceal the procedure from the girl’s parents. Those who violate the law are subject to a prison term of two to five years.
The appeals court said the ban on recruiting likely violated the First Amendment, but the law’s ban on harboring and transporting the minors did not.
The recruiting ban “prohibits a substantial amount of protected expressive speech relative to its plainly legitimate sweep,” wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown in the Dec. 2 majority decision. McKeown is an appointee of former President Bill Clinton.
McKeown noted decisions protecting sidewalk counselors seeking to dissuade women entering abortion clinics from having abortions.
“If counseling those who are about to obtain abortions to instead carry their pregnancies to term is undoubtedly protected speech, then surely the opposite is,” she wrote.
But the ban on harboring and transporting is likely constitutional because it does not prohibit expressive conduct, McKeown said.
Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote in a dissent that he would have dismissed the entire case because the plaintiffs sued the wrong defendant for federal court standing. Bea is an appointee of former President George W. Bush.
Idaho bans abortions, except to prevent the death of the pregnant person or in cases of rape or incest that are reported to police. It was the first state to criminalize the act of helping a minor obtain an abortion, even when the procedure is legal in the state where it happens.
The plaintiffs who filed suit were Idaho attorney Lourdes Matsumoto—who represents sexual and domestic violence victims—the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and the Indigenous Idaho Alliance.
The case is Matsumoto v. Labrador.
