Lawsuit challenges Minnesota abortion access in federal court
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Through prior court rulings and legislative actions, Minnesota has among the most accommodating laws granting access to abortion. A lawsuit filed late last week in federal court seeks to upend those laws.
It was brought by a group of plaintiffs that includes women who have had abortions they say weren’t voluntary, anti-abortion organizations and “crisis pregnancy centers,” which counsel clients against having abortions. They argue that Minnesota’s process for abortion consent is too loose and that its legal protections for medical providers are too lenient.
For decades, New Jersey-based attorney Harold Cassidy has brought lawsuits on behalf of people who he has said “regretted having abortions.”
He said Minnesota is in violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment because the state — acting in concert with abortion providers — illegally terminated the pregnant person’s parental rights through involuntary and unwanted abortions.
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“The plaintiffs in this case are not taking the position that all abortions are unconstitutional. Their position is that all involuntary abortions are unconstitutional. All abortions that are the product of coercion and pressure and deception are unconstitutional,” Cassidy said in a telephone interview with MPR News on Monday.
The lawsuit names Women’s Life Care Center, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, Dakota Hope Clinic, two doctors and three mothers as plaintiffs. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Gov. Tim Walz, Department of Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead and Planned Parenthood are among the defendants.
Two of the defendants, Planned Parenthood North Central States and Red River Women’s Clinic, have not commented on the lawsuit.
The complaint alleges that three women “were all subjected to the termination of their parental rights and relationships with their children by involuntary and unwanted abortions.” The plaintiffs also argue that “abortion, as practiced under Minnesota law, is not medical treatment.”
Minnesota Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, co-authored the bill that enshrined abortion rights in Minnesota law. She told MPR News that she’s keeping an eye on the case, but isn’t overly concerned.
“It’s going to be a difficult several years and we are expecting a big fight on this issue,” Port said. “We stand very firmly in the place that Minnesotans deserve to make health care decisions with their doctors, without legislators standing in the way of that.”
Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said the Senate DFL caucus has been steadfast in their support for reproductive freedom.
“We will take that issue up when we come back into session,” Murphy said.
Jill Hasday, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Minnesota Law School, said during an interview Monday on Minnesota Now that the plaintiffs want abortion to be treated as a termination of parental rights, rather than a medical procedure, and therefore subject to the same rules and regulations.
“The plaintiffs in the suit want to argue that the same constitutional requirements have to apply to abortion and that Minnesota’s laws legalizing abortion are unconstitutional because they permit the termination of parental rights before a child is born, without a court hearing, and without a court finding clear and convincing evidence of abuse and neglect.”
The lawsuit seeks an injunction barring most surgical and medical abortions until the state’s laws are changed.
Hasday said it is “extremely unlikely to prevail.”
“To me, I see it as more a sign of what's coming,” she said. “In the years to come, we’re going to see many different attempts to find a court that’s willing to say that abortion legalization violates the U.S. Constitution.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison commented on it briefly Monday during a news conference on an unrelated topic.
“I have read the complaint, and we’re going to respond to it. I don’t think it’s a very meritorious lawsuit. I will say that,” Ellison said.
Ellison said he couldn’t say more because the litigation is pending.
Amanda Allen is co-founder of the Lawyering Project, a reproductive rights advocacy group. In 2022, Allen was part of the legal team who successfully sued to end restrictions on abortion in Minnesota, including the 24-hour waiting period.
During a phone interview with MPR News on Monday, Allen said that the plaintiff’s arguments are convoluted.
“The theory here is apparently that the state actors are delegating the ability to end a pregnancy to these private abortion providers and therefore they’re acting under color of law. But it’s a very bizarre legal theory and one that I haven’t seen before,” Allen said.