The Teton County District Court issued a summary judgment ruling Wyoming’s Life is a Human Right Act (the Life Act) and the Medication Abortion Ban statutes were unconstitutional. The laws would have made most abortions illegal and made prescribing abortion drugs illegal. Violation of the laws carried loss of licensure, criminal fines and jail time for people who violated the law.
Without opining one way or another on the abortion issue itself, examination of the Court’s decision and the reasoning behind the 35-page decision is helpful to understanding this important decision.
The plaintiffs in this case filed a lawsuit arguing twelve provisions of the Wyoming Constitution were violated by the laws, and thus the law was unconstitutional.
Saying one provision of the Wyoming Constitution was dispositive, the judge decided the issue based on the Health Care Freedom Amendment, contained in article 1, section 38, which says:
(a) Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions. The parent, guardian or legal representative of any other natural person shall have the right to make health care decisions for that person.
(b) Any person may pay, and a health care provider may accept, direct payment for health care without imposition of penalties or fines for doing so.
(c) The legislature may determine reasonable and necessary restrictions on the rights granted under this section to protect the health and general welfare of the people or to accomplish the other purposes set forth in the Wyoming Constitution.
(d) The state of Wyoming shall act to preserve these rights from undue governmental infringement.
In other words, unless the state has a really good reason for regulating health care, what health care decisions a person makes for themselves is not the government’s business.
The important provisions of the Freedom Amendment are that each competent adult has the right to make their own health care decisions, that the legislature can make reasonable and necessary restrictions on the rights to protect the health and general welfare of the people and the state is obligated to protect the people from governmental infringement of these rights.
In this case, the judge issued a summary judgment. Summary judgment is a process where a court decides a trial is not necessary because there were no genuine issues of material fact, and one side was entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. That means the court decided the time and expense of trial was unnecessary because the outcome was obvious.
Both parties filed motions (or requests to the judge) to decide the case without a trial. Attached to those motions were briefs or an explanation of the law and their positions. Also attached to the motions were sworn testimony by witnesses, in the form of sworn written statements called affidavits. In some cases, portions of transcribed testimony called depositions are also included.
The judge decided there were not any conflicting important facts. In other words, the judge decided the evidence is so clear she did not find it necessary to hear witnesses testify at a trial. The judge said the plaintiffs’ testimony was not contradicted, and so there was no real evidentiary issue.
The judge also decided the law on the issue was so clear that a trial was not necessary. In this case, she decided the Health Care Freedom Amendment was very clear, and that the new law did not overcome the requirement that the state not infringe on people’s health care decisions.
The judge held the right to make one’s own health care decisions is a “fundamental right.” If a right is a “fundamental right,” then the court will require the state to prove a compelling interest narrowly tailored to meet the government interest in infringing upon the right. If the state cannot prove that compelling interest, then the law infringing on the right will be held unconstitutional.
A more detailed analysis of the arguments in the case will come in a later column. This column just explains the basic process of the decision.
So, the court held that an abortion is “health care.” Since an abortion is considered “health care,” the state of Wyoming was obligated to prove it had a compelling interest in stopping abortions. The court rejected the state’s argument that the fetus had rights which should be weighed in the abortion situation, and held the decision was the mother’s alone.
Ultimately, the court decided the state did not establish a compelling interest in excluding pregnant women from fully realizing their constitutional right to health care – particularly an abortion – and that the abortion statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of her pregnancy.
The court said the testimony offered by the plaintiffs’ medical experts was uncontested, and so there were no material facts before the court to justify a trial.
Based on the evidence before the court, and the language of the Health Care Freedom Amendment, the statutes were held unconstitutional.
The governor has promised an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court. On appeal, the Supreme Court can look at all of the evidence submitted and review all of the arguments made at the trial court. The review is called an “on the record” review, which means that no new evidence will be accepted.
On appeal, each side will get to submit briefs and make an argument, and the Supreme Court will issue a decision based on the law submitted and the evidence the court considered. Since the District Court issued a summary judgment, the Supreme Court gets to look at all the evidence in the light most favorable to the state of Wyoming.
If the Supreme Court decides there are factual issues that need to be resolved, the matter will be sent back to the District Court for a trial. If the Supreme Court decides there are no factual disputes and the District Court’s conclusion on the facts was right, then it can analyze the law alone. Based on the law, it can reverse or affirm the District Court’s decision.
In any event, this matter is far from over.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 – 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
