The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday issued a temporary stay allowing Idaho to enforce its ban on most abortions while the state appeals a lower-court order from a liberal judge who tried to create a right to abortion.
The appeals court ruling is a decision Attorney General Raúl Labrador said means unborn children and their mothers are again protected under Idaho law.
The stay puts on hold a ruling by U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill that had created extra exceptions to Idaho’s Defense of Life Act.
State law allows abortion only in cases of rape or incest or when the mother’s life is threatened. Winmill’s August ruling would have permitted abortions when a doctor concluded the mother’s physical health was threatened or she was at high risk of suicide. However, decades of research confirms abortion raises the suicide risk for women.
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The judge later limited that order to the abortionist who filed the lawsuit, Stacy Seyb.
Labrador appealed immediately. On Thursday he said the Ninth Circuit had put Winmill’s order on hold.
“Last month a federal judge blocked Idaho from enforcing our pro-life laws. We appealed immediately, and today the Ninth Circuit put that order on hold,” Labrador said. “Idaho can enforce the law again while this case is heard, which means unborn children and their mothers in our state are protected under Idaho law and doctors can continue making the good-faith judgments the law has always allowed. The Supreme Court settled in Dobbs that this decision belongs to the people of Idaho and their elected representatives. We will continue to defend it as far as needed.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, which is working with Labrador’s office in Seyb v. Labrador, said the district court had become the first court in the nation after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to “find” a new federal constitutional right to abortion.
ADF Senior Counsel John Bursch praised the stay.
“States have the strongest possible interest in protecting the most fundamental of our human rights—the right to life. Nothing in the federal Constitution grants a right to take innocent, unborn life,” Bursch said. “We’re pleased the court is respecting Idahoans’ desire to protect life, which Attorney General Labrador has fought so courageously to defend.”
Winmill had first blocked the ban more broadly, then narrowed the injunction after Labrador argued federal judges generally may not issue statewide orders reaching beyond the plaintiff. The judge wrote that “an injunction limited to Dr. Seyb will suffice to address the alleged harm,” but he remained persuaded that abortions to protect women against serious health risks or against death from self-harm were constitutionally protected.
Labrador had asked that the block be lifted entirely.
State lawyers argued the injunction defied Dobbs, which held there is no constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to the states. They said the order created expansive rights based on an abortion doctor’s subjective assessment of risk.
The Ninth Circuit stay remains in effect until a panel rules on Labrador’s motion to keep Winmill’s decision on hold for the length of the appeal. Virtual oral arguments on that motion are set for September 22.
