Judge uses Kavanaugh’s own words in contentious battle with GOP Alabama AG

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling in 2022, Alabama was among the red states that passed a law that forbids abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has been fighting lawsuits challenging the ban, including one from the Alabama ACLU and one from the Yellowhammer Fund (a group that provides abortion assistance). Marshall has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuits, but on Monday, May 6, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson denied his motion — and cited U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Dobbs concurrence when making his decision.

Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee, was among the five justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs.

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Newsweek's Khaleda Rahman reports, "In his motion to dismiss the lawsuits, Marshall argued that while it is legal for a woman to travel to another state for an abortion, those who help her do so could face prosecution…. Thompson has not issued a final ruling in the case, but he wrote, in a filing, that the plaintiffs 'correctly contend' that the attorney general 'cannot constitutionally prosecute people for acts taken within the State meant to facilitate lawful out of state conduct, including obtaining an abortion.'"

Thompson, Rahman adds, "cited Kavanaugh's Dobbs concurrence, in which the justice wrote that the question of whether a state could 'bar a resident of that State from traveling to another State to obtain an abortion' was 'not especially difficult as a constitutional matter' because of 'the constitutional right to interstate travel.'"

Thompson also wrote that Alabama "can no more restrict people from going to, say, California to engage in what is lawful there than California can restrict people from coming to Alabama to do what is lawful here."

Meagan Burrows of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project said that Thompson sent "a strong signal to anti-abortion politicians that their efforts to prevent pregnant people in states with bans from obtaining the help they need to access legal, out-of-state abortion care are blatantly unconstitutional."

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Read Newsweek's full report at this link.