Idaho won a federal appeals court ruling on Friday that lets the state keep enforcing its abortion laws while a doctor's constitutional challenge is appealed, handing Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador the stay he had sought. The divided panel froze a judge's order that had barred enforcement against the physician when he judged an abortion necessary to protect a patient's health.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to grant the stay, keeping an August injunction from U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill on hold while the case is appealed, CBS2 Idaho News reported. The order does not decide the merits. But the majority, Judges Consuelo Callahan and Kim McLane Wardlaw, found that the state officials had made "a strong showing of likely success on the merits," Just the News reported, and wrote that it was unlikely the plaintiff, Dr. Stacy Seyb, could "square the district court's perspective on the history and tradition concerning abortions with the Supreme Court's perspective in Dobbs," according to The Hill.
That 2022 decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, held that the Constitution confers no right to abortion and overturned Roe v. Wade. Idaho was among the states that adopted near-total bans in its wake, The Hill noted.
Seyb, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist with St. Luke's Health System, argues that Idaho's laws are unconstitutional because they make no exception for pregnancies that threaten a woman's health, including through the risk of self-harm, the Idaho Press reported. The state's law permits abortion to prevent a pregnant woman's death, but it has no such exception for her health. Winmill agreed with Seyb in August. He ruled that Idaho could not enforce its Defense of Life Act and Fetal Heartbeat Act when, in a physician's good-faith medical judgment, continuing a pregnancy carried a non-negligible risk of serious and lasting harm to the patient's health or a non-negligible risk of death from self-harm. After Labrador appealed, the judge narrowed the order so that it protected only Seyb, and the appeals court paused that version while it reviewed the case. Labrador and Ada County Prosecuting Attorney Jan Bennetts asked the 9th Circuit to stay the injunction entirely.
In weighing that request, the majority said Idaho has "a strong interest in limiting abortions to those allowed under its law," an interest it found outweighs the potential harm Seyb faces from following the law while the appeal is pending. Responding to the argument that abortion should be available when a pregnant patient is at risk of suicide, the judges wrote that "there are other methods for preventing suicide, and Idaho's 'profound interest' in preserving fetal life reasonably supports the use of those means over the termination of pregnancy," the Idaho Press reported.
Wardlaw, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, also wrote separately. The panel, she said, is "bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court," and "in light of the Dobbs majority opinion, I join Judge Callahan in concluding that Defendants have shown a likelihood of success on the merits," The Hill reported. She noted that Idaho remains subject to the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and she wrote that "there may come a time when this Court is called upon to evaluate a state abortion ban solely under the minimal constitutional protections which remain post-Dobbs," before adding that "that is not the question we decide at this juncture," according to the Idaho Press account of her concurrence.
Judge Marsha Berzon dissented. In her view, Dobbs ended the constitutional right to elective abortion but never settled whether the Constitution protects abortion when it is medically necessary to preserve a pregnant woman's life or health, CBS2 Idaho News reported. She warned that some women could be "required to continue their pregnancies at serious, permanent risk to their health," and wrote that "the risk, absent the injunction, to Dr. Seyb's pregnant patients of serious and lasting harm short of death is definitionally a risk of irreparable injury," The Hill reported.
Labrador cheered the result. "I am thrilled," he said in a statement quoted by Just the News. "Idaho's law will remain in full effect during the appeal process. Idaho's unwavering protection for unborn children and their mothers will continue as intended." John Bursch, senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy at Alliance Defending Freedom, which is defending the laws alongside the state, said the court had respected Idahoans' desire to protect life. "Nothing in the federal Constitution grants a right to take innocent, unborn life," he said.
The ruling leaves one important limit in place. A separate federal injunction involving St. Luke's Health System still bars Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban there when doing so would conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, and it requires the state to let emergency providers in the St. Luke's system perform abortions needed to stabilize a patient with an emergency medical condition. Idaho did not appeal that order, and Friday's decision does not affect it, CBS2 Idaho News reported.
The appeal itself has months to run. The panel set a briefing schedule with filings due in December, January and February, the station reported, and the defendants' final brief is due Feb. 19, with Seyb allowed an optional last brief within 21 days after that, according to the Idaho Press. The appeal will continue into 2027.
The lawsuit could also intersect with Proposition 1, a ballot initiative titled the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act that seeks to expand abortion access in Idaho, including when a pregnant woman's health is threatened, the exception at the center of Seyb's case. The Idaho Press noted that it is not yet clear whether the measure will affect the litigation.