Court Finds Injunction of Iowa’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Should Remain in Place
- December 16, 2022
Iowa’s ban on abortion after six weeks will remain enjoined after a trial court in the state denied December 8 Governor Kim Reynold’s motion to dissolve a permanent injunction that was put in place in 2019.
The Iowa legislature in 2018 enacted the so-called “Fetal Heartbeat” bill, which prohibited, with certain narrow exceptions, abortions after an abdominal ultrasound detects fetal cardiac activity--typically occurring around six weeks. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland challenged the law. A state court held the law was unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction.
In June 2018, the Iowa Supreme Court initially held that a fundamental right to abortion existed under the Iowa Constitution. However, four years later, in June 2022, the state supreme court overruled that precedent, rejecting “the proposition that there is a fundamental right to an abortion in Iowa’s Constitution subjecting abortion to strict scrutiny.”
The high court did not, at that time, decide what constitutional standard should replace strict scrutiny, and instead found the U.S. Supreme Court’s undue burden test remained the governing standard. A month later, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 142 S. Ct. 2228, 2242 (2022), overturning Roe v. Wade and holding that rational-basis review is the appropriate standard for constitutional challenges of state abortion regulations.
Governor Reynolds, on behalf of the state, then moved to dissolve the permanent injunction. The Iowa District Court for Polk County denied the motion, holding the Iowa rules of civil procedure did not provide a path for vacating the injunction more than one year after the judgment based on a change in law and that the state failed to show the court had inherent authority to do so.
“There is no caselaw to support, and none has been given by the State, that a permanent injunction being issued based on a finding that a statute was unconstitutional and void at the time it was passed may later be modified or vacated because of the inherent authority of the issuing court to modify or vacate the permanent injunction based on a change in the law,” the court noted.
The court also found the state failed to show a substantial change in the law to justify dissolving the injunction.
The state high court’s decision in June 2022 did not find the standard of review for abortion regulations would be rational basis like Court in Dobbs. Instead, the Iowa Supreme Court said “for now” the standard would be the undue burden test. According to the court, the “for now” language meant that the standard “could change in the future, not necessarily predicated on Dobbs.”
With that standard still undecided, Iowa’s ban on abortions after six weeks was subject to, and failed, the undue burden test. As a result, the state failed to show a change in the law that would warrant dissolving the permanent injunction, the court concluded.
In a statement, Reynolds said the state would appeal the ruling immediately. “I’m very disappointed in the ruling filed today by the district court, but regardless of the outcome, this case was always going to the Iowa Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.
Planned Parenthood North Central States President and CEO Ruth Richardson called the decision “a huge win for abortion rights and bodily autonomy in Iowa.”
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds, Case No. EQCE083074 (Iowa Dist. Ct. Dec. 12, 2022).