The Wyoming Supreme Court declined last week to hear the Wyoming Attorney General’s argument that a court ruling declaring abortion is a fundamental health care right is flawed.
The high court had ruled Jan. 6 that abortion is a fundamental right under the state Constitution’s promise of health care autonomy, and that laws restricting access to abortion are subject to the toughest standard of judicial review in constitutional law.
Attorney General Special Assistant Jay Jerde filed a hail mary argument Jan. 20, asking for a re-hearing on what he cast as a flawed approach by the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Jerde asserted that the Jan. 6 ruling in Wyoming v. Johnson ignored the will of the people, and that the court changed its own legal rules without notice and completely ignored a possible right to life embedded in the Wyoming Constitution.
On Feb. 18, the Wyoming Supreme Court filed a terse denial to revisit those arguments and reconsider its ruling
“Now, having examined the files and record of the Court and having carefully considered the issues raised in Appellants’ Petition for Rehearing, the Court finds that the petition should be denied,” says the order, signed by Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden.
The order adds that the matter came before five justices: Boomgaarden; Justices Kari Gray, Robert Jarosh, and John Fenn; and retired Chief Justice Kate Fox, who was recalled to serve on the case.
Justice Bridget Hill, who joined the bench last year after Fox’s retirement, was recused from the case.
In the original Jan. 6 decision, Gray had been the lone dissent against overturning Wyoming’s two abortion bans. She called abortion a legislative rather than a judicial question. She read the constitution’s promise of health care autonomy less broadly than the three-justice majority (Fox, Boomgaarden and Jarosh), and less stringently than the fourth concurring majority justice (Fenn).
Abortion remains legal in Wyoming. Multiple lawmakers asserted this week that the practice remains legal up to the late term of pregnancy.
The high court suggested in an introduction to its decision that if the Legislature wants to restrict abortion, it should push to change the state Constitution to allow that.
Sen. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, attempted to bring a proposed amendment that, had the Legislature and voters both approved it, would have given the Legislature the authority to define “health care.”
Citing concerns over a potential authoritarian approach to other kinds of health care, multiple Republican senators, along with the body’s two Democrats, voted this month against introducing that proposed amendment, and it failed to reach its two-thirds introductory threshold for non-budget bills entering the budget sessions of even-numbered years.
A bill proposing a felony ban on abortions after the point at which an unborn child’s heartbeat can be heard cleared the House of Representatives Tuesday and now heads to the Senate.
Democrats in the House argued this week that the Heartbeat bill will be found unconstitutional. They offered instead a misdemeanor-level ban on abortions up to the point of viability.
The House majority rejected that change.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
