NEW ORLEANS (CN) — A near-total abortion ban across Louisiana can be enforced following a district court decision Friday overruling a temporary restraining order that blocked a “trigger law” abortion ban from going into effect.
Orleans Parish District Judge Ethel Julien said from the bench she didn’t have the authority to extend a restraining order blocking the ban and that the lawsuit should have been heard in the state’s capital Baton Rouge rather than New Orleans because of its claims that parts of the trigger law are unconstitutionally vague and inconsistent, matters which involve legislation.
The decision came on the heels of President Biden’s executive order issued Friday to protect access to abortion in states where the procedure has not been outlawed and to lessen penalties women might face for having one, in addition to bolstering patient privacy.
It also follows an ordinance passed this week by the New Orleans City Council that stipulates public funds cannot be used to enforce the state’s abortion ban.
The trigger law has been on state books since 2006 and briefly went into effect immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and put an end to a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.
Soon after the Supreme Court ruling, Orleans Parish District Judge Robin Giarrusso issued a temporary restraining order that banned enforcement of the trigger law from taking effect. Giarrusso's ruling came in a legal challenge to the ban filed by an abortion clinic in north Louisiana and others.
Julien's decision to end the restraining order was hailed as a victory for Louisiana's Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry and lawyers for the state who asked the Louisiana Supreme Court last week to uphold the ban.
“The state of Louisiana, through its people and through its Legislature and through their own actions has spoken again and again, and again, both constitutionally and statutorily in anticipation that Roe would be overturned, so that the state of Louisiana would respect its children before themselves,” Landry told reporters outside the courtroom following Friday’s hearing.
Saying Julien “got it right" and that his opponents “have been venue-shopping,” Landry said he and his staff “intend to continue to defend the laws of the state and to enforce the laws.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which helped bring the lawsuit on behalf of the Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, confirmed in a statement Friday that abortion services statewide have stopped and said it will ask a court in Baton Rouge to hear the case.
“Today’s ruling was on a technicality and did not touch the merits of this case,” said Jenny Ma, senior staff attorney for the organization. “I am personally devastated for patients in Louisiana who are now panicking trying to figure out how to get care."
Ma pledged to continue the fight.
"We’re just starting the legal battle to get the ban blocked again. Since Roe fell last month, abortion services have ceased in nine other states, and that number is continuing to grow," she said. "With every state that bans abortion, the distance patients in the south have to travel grows exponentially. So losing access in Louisiana, even for a day, is contributing to a growing health crisis not only for people in Louisiana but across the south.”
Louisiana is one of several states that had trigger laws on their books that immediately made abortion illegal in the event Roe was overturned in the Supreme Court.
In Mississippi, where the law that led to the Supreme Court decision originated, attorneys for the only abortion provider in the state filed another lawsuit Thursday seeking to block the state's near-total ban. They had made the same request two days before then and were rejected by a state judge.
Mississippi and Louisiana were recently ranked 48th and 49th in the U.S. for overall childhood wellbeing, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual Kids Count Data Book, which considers all factors contributing to overall health of American children including trauma, poverty rates and access to quality education and medical care.
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