The pro-choice coalition that has successfully sued to block every abortion ban and restriction Wyoming has passed since 2022 is challenging the state’s new “Heartbeat” act, signed by Gov. Mark Gordon on Monday.
But Danielle Johnson, Drs. Rene Hinkle and Giovannina Anthony, Wellspring Health Access and Chelsea’s Fund did not file a new legal case against Wyoming over the new ban, which criminalizes abortions after the point at which a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
Instead, they’re are asking retired District Court Judge Thomas T.C. Campbell to add their challenge of the Human Heartbeat Act into an ongoing Natrona County District Court case.
Campbell last April blocked two abortion restrictions from going into effect via that case.
The pro-choice group cites efficiency as its reasoning.
“As these same Plaintiffs will challenge the new law regardless of forum, judicial economy favors (adding it to the earlier case) rather than force Plaintiffs to commence new litigation,” says a motion the group filed Tuesday in Natrona County District Court, signed by John Robinson and Marci Crank Bramlet of Robinson Bramlet LLC.
The attorneys argued further that the state wouldn’t suffer from prejudice even with the late addition to their yearlong case.
“Here, State Defendants cannot claim prejudice when they possess the targets and know their locations,” says the filing. The filing also argues that lumping the new challenge into the old case avoids “serial litigation over the same critical issue.”
Why Campbell?
One major tenet of Wyoming law has changed since the plaintiffs filed a challenge to a pre-abortion ultrasound requirement and a restriction on abortion clinics’ standards last year.
That is, on Jan. 6, the Wyoming Supreme Court declared that abortion is health care, and that it’s a fundamental right under the state Constitution’s promise of health care autonomy.
State laws restricting abortion are now subject to the most rigorous standard of court review in constitutional law.
A key difference between Campbell adjudicating a case as a retired judge recalled for duty, and a judge who is not retired, is that Campbell does not have to stand for retention. That means the voters cannot fire him by a ballot measure.
A regular Natrona County District Court judge would face a retention question before the voters every six years.
Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that his office will file a response to the group’s motion.
The new legal complaint the pro-choice group hopes to file in Campbell’s case says the new “heartbeat” ban strips Wyoming women and their families of fundamental rights.
While it hinges on a “detectable fetal heartbeat” and contains a carveout for medical emergencies, the proposed filing claims both terms are not well defined.
By about six weeks’ gestation, “the cells that will eventually form the heart have developed into a tube that emits electrical impulses and may produce pulsations that are detectable with a transvaginal ultrasound,” says the document, “but it is unclear whether the 2026 Abortion Ban refers to this particular event, or some other stage of embryonic development.”
The effect is to bar anyone from performing or attempting to induce an abortion after six weeks’ gestation, which the group casts as an unconstitutional and unsound measure.
Violating the ban is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and fines up to $10,000.
Nurses, doctors, physicians assistants and pharmacists can also lose their licenses for violating the ban.
Gordon signed the act into law Monday, but voiced reservations since it doesn’t have rape or incest exemptions - and since it brought the now-realized concern that it would prompt more litigation.
The Legislature had the chance this session to send to the people this general election a bid to reshape the state’s constitution, so that lawmakers could restrict or ban abortion. The senate rejected the one proposed constitutional amendment addressing that provision on Feb. 12, with multiple Republicans who voted against it saying its language was too broad.
It would have allowed the Legislature to define “health care” altogether.
The Human Heartbeat Act contains a safety net: a ban on abortions after the point of viability, which says it would spring into place if a court blocks the heartbeat ban.
A heartbeat can be detected at about six weeks’ gestation whereas viability happens at about 23 weeks.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
