In a hearing on March 19, abortion-rights groups seeking to overturn three anti-abortion state laws called for the Natrona County District Court to make a speedy decision before a trial convenes.
Attorneys for the state of Wyoming also called for such a decision, known as summary judgement, but to allow the laws to stand.
The state argued the three laws are necessary to protect women now that abortion is considered healthcare. But an attorney for the plaintiffs, Peter Modlin, said the laws are “a solution in search of a problem.”
In a separate move, the plaintiffs, which include the nonprofit Chelsea’s Fund and Wellspring Health Access, the state’s only clinic that provides procedural abortions, also asked the judge to add a fourth newer law, the Human Heartbeat Act, to the ongoing Natrona County case.
That law, HB 126, went into effect on March 9 and bans most abortions when fetal cardiac activity can be detected using a transvaginal ultrasound. That can happen as early as six weeks, a time when abortion advocates say many people don't know they’re pregnant yet. The law includes an exception to protect the life of a woman, but it does not address situations involving rape or incest.
But the focus of the March 19 hearing was on both sides’ dueling motions for summary judgement on the three initial abortion restrictions, all of which have been temporarily paused by retired Laramie County Judge Thomas T.C. Campbell as the lawsuit plays out.
Those paused restrictions, enacted during the 2025 legislative session, are as follows:
- HB 42 requires clinics providing procedural abortions to be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers. That impacts the only clinic in the state, Wellspring. It mandates the clinic’s physicians to get admitting privileges for their patients at a hospital no more than 10 miles away from Wellspring. It also requires the clinic to renovate doorways and halls.
- HB 64 requires pregnant Wyomingites to have a transvaginal ultrasound two days before receiving abortion medication like mifepristone. Transvaginal ultrasounds are done by inserting a wand-like device into a woman’s vagina to check for a fetal heartbeat. Abdominal ultrasounds, by contrast, are done on the outside of the body and are considered noninvasive.
- Part of HB 164 excludes the use of abortion pills for off-label uses, a common practice in the U.S. For instance, mifepristone is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for pregnancy termination and treating hyperglycemia in patients showing signs of Cushing’s syndrome. Its off-label uses also include cervical maturation and adjunct therapy for uterine leiomyomas. Overall, HB 164 outlines which medications a healthcare provider can prescribe for off-label uses in Wyoming.
The plaintiffs’ arguments for summary judgement on all three laws referenced a recent state Supreme Court ruling that upheld abortion as a form of healthcare.
That case, brought by some of the same plaintiffs, challenged two near-total abortion bans enacted in 2024. Plaintiffs successfully argued the laws violated Wyomingites’ constitutional right to make their own healthcare decisions.
Modlin told the Natrona County court that the laws needed to “be a compelling government interest,” and that the laws have to further that interest and be narrowly tailored to that interest.
“ They have to, as the Supreme Court put it, ‘substantiate that interest’ by showing an actual problem that needs solving,” said Modlin. “And we think that's a very significant holding by the Supreme Court because there is no problem here that needs solving. The statutes at issue are a solution in search of a problem. And why is that? Well, there is a complete failure of proof on this required showing by the state.”
After Modlin made his argument, an attorney for the state, Donovan Burton, spoke in favor of keeping the laws intact.
Burton said the court needed to look at the legal restrictions the state Legislature was attempting to impose through those laws and not rely as much on “scientific factual analysis” for its decision-making process.
He talked about HB 42 first.
“ What this is about is regulating facilities that perform elective abortions, and what the Legislature recognized in all of this saga of abortion bans posed by legislatures, court cases, [is that] we've created this scheme where up until two months ago, abortion wasn't healthcare,” Burton said. “Our healthcare code didn't directly target or didn't directly regulate and capture what was happening at these clinics. And the Legislature found a need to make a gap-filler, because as this court is aware, abortion litigation, abortion bans – it’s not over. The moral and philosophical debate will continue after today.”
That debate will live on through the new partial abortion ban, HB 126, he said.
In a phone interview with Wyoming Public Radio after the hearing wrapped up, Wellspring Founder and President Julie Burkhart discussed her thoughts on the oral arguments. Since HB 126 went into effect earlier this month, she said the clinic has had to refer around 25 patients to other providers, mostly in Colorado.
“None of these laws are medically necessary,” said Burkhart. “They are absolutely burdensome to our patients, and it would have steep ramifications as [Modlin] said, that, you know – it would put us in peril, especially if we had to abide by the TRAP [targeted regulation of abortion providers] law [HB 42]. There's no medical reason why a facility that also provides abortion care would have to be regulated as an ambulatory surgery center.”
Burkhart said she and the other plaintiffs in the case feel that the three laws, as well as HB 126, do not fit within the framework the state Supreme Court laid out earlier this year in terms of abortion rights in the state Constitution.
She said she hoped Campbell will make a decision about the plaintiffs’ and defendants’ request for summary judgement as soon as possible. Campbell did not say when he would decide, only that both parties would “get it as promptly as [they] can.”
A separate hearing for the question of whether or not HB 126 can be amended into the ongoing lawsuit or whether it will need to be a separate lawsuit will likely occur sometime in April, Burkhart said, but that she wasn’t sure exactly when.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
