A lawsuit against Alabama’s attorney general over his threat to prosecute organizations that help people cross state lines for an abortion can proceed, a federal judge ruled.
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson found that the groups that brought the complaint had sufficiently alleged that Attorney General Steve Marshall’s threats, if carried out, would violate the right to travel and free speech. Thompson’s preliminary ruling, issued Monday, denied Marshall’s request for dismissal.
Last July, the groups sued Marshall for threatening to hold them criminally liable for helping people raise funds to obtain an out-of-state abortion. Marshall had said in a radio interview in August 2022 that his office would scrutinize any entity that provides financial support to those who need money to travel for the procedure.
In August, Marshall argued in a motion to have the lawsuit thrown out that buying bus tickets or driving someone across state lines to get an abortion was a “criminal conspiracy.”
The judge ultimately wasn’t convinced. Marshall’s threat to prosecute such groups, including the West Alabama Women’s Center and the Yellowhammer Fund, goes against right-of-travel jurisprudence, he wrote.
“The Constitution protects the right to cross state lines and engage in lawful conduct in other States, including receiving an abortion,” Thompson wrote. The judge added: “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.”
A patient’s right to travel is “inextricably bound up” with the groups’ right to help them do so, the judge wrote, because “the plaintiffs face the threat of enforcement should they resume facilitating out-of-state abortions, they have every incentive to litigate their claim vigorously.”
The decimation of Roe v. Wade has led to a surge in people crossing state lines for an abortion, and consequently to threats of prosecution against patients, providers and abortion funds involved in such travel. Individuals are also bringing legal action to penalize those who pursue the procedure: In Texas, for example, a man is seeking to depose his former partner to see if he can pursue a wrongful death claim after he says she traveled to Colorado for an abortion, The Washington Post reported.