State asks judge to pause ruling that struck down North Dakota’s abortion ban
BISMARCK, ND — The state of North Dakota is asking a judge to delay his ruling from last week, which knocked down the state’s abortion ban until the state Supreme Court rules on a planned appeal.
The state’s motion to stay a pending appeal was filed Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Bruce Romanick ruled last week that North Dakota’s abortion ban is “unconstitutionally invalid due to vagueness” and that pregnant women in the state have a fundamental right to an abortion before they are viable under the state constitution.
Attorneys for the state said that “a delay is warranted until a decision and mandate is issued by the North Dakota Supreme Court based on the appeal that the state will expeditiously pursue. Simply put, this case raises serious, difficult, and novel legal issues.”
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overthrown Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion. Shortly thereafter, North Dakota’s only abortion clinic moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, and challenged North Dakota has since repealed its abortion ban, making most abortions illegal.
In 2023, the Republican-controlled North Dakota Legislature revised the state’s abortion laws amid the ongoing litigation. The amended ban made it a felony to perform all abortions except for procedures to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or a “serious risk to her health” and in cases of rape or incest, but only for up to six weeks. The law entered into force from April 2023.
The Red River Women’s Clinic, which was then joined by several physicians, that law is contested as unconstitutionally vague for doctors and the health exception too narrow. In court in July, about a month before a scheduled trial, the state the judge asked to dismiss the lawsuit, while plaintiffs asked him to set the trial for August. He the test was cancelled and later declared the law unconstitutional, but has not yet made a final ruling.
In an interview Tuesday, Marc Hearron, senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the plaintiffs would oppose any suspension.
“Look, they don’t have to appeal and they don’t have to file for a stay because as I said, this decision is not going to rapidly open clinics across the state,” he said. “We’re talking about routine care, necessary, time-sensitive health care, abortion care that is generally provided in hospitals or by maternal-fetal medicine specialists, and for the state to file for a stay or appeal a ruling that allows those physicians to practice medicine, I find shameful.”
Republican Sen. Janne Myrdal, who introduced the 2023 bill, said she is confident the state Supreme Court will overturn the judge’s ruling. She called the decision one of the worst legal decisions she has ever read.
“I challenge anyone to read their opinion and find anything other than ‘personal opinions’ in it,” she said Monday.
In his ruling, Romanick said: “The Court has been left to formulate findings and conclusions on an issue of vital public importance when longstanding precedent on that issue at the federal level no longer exists, and much of North Dakota’s precedent on that issue was based on federal precedent that has now been turned on its head — with relatively little idea of how the state’s appellate court will approach the issue.”