Abortion Ban Blocked by Evenly Split Iowa High Court Ruling

An equally divided Iowa Supreme Court preserved abortion access Friday by upholding a lower court’s block on the state’s six-week abortion ban.

The odd ruling, while continuing to halt a previously rejected abortion ban in the state, also allows the Legislature to reinstate the pregnancy-termination restriction.

With one justice sitting out, the court divided three-three and upheld a trial court injunction on the state’s “heartbeat” ban, which largely prohibits abortions except in the earliest weeks of pregnancy. However, the justices acknowledged that the divided decision wouldn’t be a barrier to the Republican-controlled state Legislature passing the restriction anew.

“This case is extraordinary,” Justice Thomas D. Waterman wrote for the three-judge coalition striking the ban. “It involves the polarizing issue of abortion, and specifically an unprecedented effort to judicially revive a statute that was declared unconstitutional in a never-appealed final judgment four years ago.”

Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justices Waterman and Edward M. Mansfield said that the state’s high court couldn’t override the lower court’s decision to block the ban four years ago because that ruling was based on proper precedent at the time. The state argued the justices could reverse that decision because the US Supreme Court precedent Roe v. Wade and prior state case law were undermined by the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as well as a 2022 Iowa Supreme Court ruling.

In a statement praising the ruling ACLU of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said that the “outcome of this case could not matter more to the health and basic rights of Iowans,” and the heartbeat ban would block more than 98% of abortions in the state.

‘Rational Basis’

Because the trial court made the right call at the time, the decision must stand, the justices said.

As a result, the state high court rejected the lower scrutiny of state abortion restrictions—called “rational basis review"—adopted by the US Supreme Court in Dobbs, saying instead that the higher standard that restrictions shouldn’t pose an “undue burden” on pregnant patients remains the rule in Iowa.

The three justices pointed to several reasons, and said the state Legislature knew its heartbeat ban was “hypothetical” because it violated federal and state precedent at the time it was enacted.

“To date, not a single state supreme court that previously recognized protection for abortion under its state’s constitution has overruled its precedent in light of Dobbs to adopt rational basis review,” Waterman wrote.

Looking to prior state precedent, Waterman also questioned whether the state high court should impose a low bar for state regulation in Iowa, a state that imposes higher standards for other government actions, such as an individual’s right to privacy in the garbage they discard.

“It would be ironic and troubling for our court to become the first state supreme court in the nation to hold that trash set out in a garbage can for collection is entitled to more constitutional protection than a woman’s interest in autonomy and dominion over her own body,” he said.

‘Ducking It’

The opinion from the other three justices said that the lower court’s injunction should have been lifted because the heartbeat ban was still good law and was merely blocked by a now-defunct legal standard.

“When a court holds that a law conflicts with the constitution and is void, this means only that the law cannot be given effect in that case,” Justice Christopher McDonald said in his opinion joined by Justices Matthew McDermott and David May.

McDermott challenged the court in another separate opinion characterizing Friday’s ruling as a dodge of the court’s duty to make a ruling. He also criticized his opposing colleagues for peddling “in speculation about what the legislative and executive branches were thinking when they enacted the heartbeat law.”

“Refusing to exercise our discretion to take on this case—more pointedly stated, ducking it—is, in my view, wrong,” he said. “We fail the parties, the public, and the rule of law in our refusal today to apply the law and decide this case.”

In a statement saying that Iowans will be disappointed by the result, the state’s attorney, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Chris Schandevel, said that the decision acknowledged that the power to reenact the ban lies with the state Legislature.

“The legislature should redouble its life-saving efforts to enshrine into law further protections for unborn children,” he said.

The case is Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, Inc. v. Reynolds, Iowa, No. 22–2036, 6/16/23.