The Missouri Supreme Court has declined to immediately review a lower court ruling that paused enforcement of most abortion restrictions in the state.
In a unanimous opinion issued Tuesday, the judges ordered the case be heard in the Western District of Missouri, turning down a request from Attorney General Andrew Bailey to skip that intermediate step.
Under the state’s constitution, the Supreme Court has the exclusive right to decide whether a law violates the state or federal constitutions. But the judges wrote that even though the underlying case deals with the constitutionality of a state statute, the temporary injunction that Bailey had asked the court to review did not.
Voters in November enshrined the right to an abortion in the Missouri Constitution. Planned Parenthood and its allies immediately sued to challenge the state’s near-total ban on the procedure as well as regulations known as TRAP laws that are designed to make the procedure more difficult to access.
Three times, Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang of the 16th Circuit in Kansas City paused enforcement of the ban and most of those regulations. In order to issue a preliminary injunction, a judge must find that the party who filed the lawsuit is likely to prevail on the merits of the case.
But, the judges wrote, “the issuance of a preliminary injunction, therefore, in no way adjudicates the merits of Planned Parenthood's constitutional challenges to the validity of state statutes.”
Dr. Margaret Baum, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, said in a statement that the ruling “affirms what Missourians voted for — their right to access abortion in our state. Planned Parenthood is still here to provide vital care Missourians need in their own communities, including procedural abortion.”
This story has been updated with a statement from Planned Parenthood Great Rivers.
