A federal judge in Alabama ruled late Monday evening that the state attorney general cannot prosecute interest groups for helping women travel out of the state to obtain abortions.
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote in a 131-page opinion that the right to interstate travel, an issue central to the lawsuit, is “one of our most fundamental constitutional rights.”
“It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard,” wrote Thompson. “It is another thing for the State to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the Attorney General, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another State to engage in conduct that is lawful there.”
The lawsuit was filed by several nonprofit groups that provide financial assistance to women seeking out-of-state abortions after the federal Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade abortion protections in June 2022.
Immediately after the overturning of Roe, a dormant Alabama statute, also called a “trigger law,” took effect, prohibiting all abortion except to save the mother’s life and health or if the pregnancy is nonviable.
Shortly thereafter, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made several public statements that he could prosecute public aid organizations for “criminal conspiracy” for aiding or advising women on obtaining an abortion in another state.
Marshall argued in lawsuit documents that the conspiracy to obtain an out-of-state abortion would happen within Alabama and, therefore, would be under his jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute.
Thompson equated this logic to prosecuting Alabama residents for planning a Las Vegas bachelor party since casino gambling is illegal in the state.
Thompson was appointed to the federal bench by former President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Megan Burrows, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, told the Washington Post that she expects the Alabama ruling to “serve as good legal precedent we can rely on in other states.”
A similar case is currently pending against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed by Fund Texas Choice, a nonprofit abortion travel fund. Paxton and local prosecutors initially threatened to charge women seeking out-of-state abortions, but a federal judge in Austin issued an injunction against such charges in 2023.
Idaho and Tennessee have also issued similar policies with respect to traveling out of state for an abortion.
It is unclear whether the opinion in the Alabama case will have any bearing on pending litigation regarding the sale and transportation of the abortion pill mifepristone across state lines.
Recent weeks have seen an escalation in tensions between Texas and New York, which has a shield law in place to protect telehealth doctors from prosecution if they prescribe abortion pills to patients in states where it is illegal.
Texas’s case against a New York doctor for prescribing mifepristone to a Texas resident is anticipated to work its way to the Supreme Court.
