Federal appeals court affirms dismissal of Right to Life challenge to Michigan abortion protections

A panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the federal district court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Right to Life of Michigan challenging the state’s constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights, agreeing with the initial dismissal that the plaintiffs lack standing in their suit. 

The suit argued that Proposal 3, which was a ballot initiative in 2022 that enshrined reproductive freedoms, including the right to an abortion, in the Michigan Constitution, “threatens parental rights related to a minor child’s decision to seek an abortion,” according to a press release from Right to Life of Michigan issued when the appeal was filed.

However, in an opinion from Circuit Judge John K. Bush released Monday determined that the plaintiffs failed to show that their suit would actually resolve the concerns that they brought the lawsuit over.

“From the start, this lawsuit was a procedurally flawed, meritless, and politically motivated attack on reproductive rights that Michigan voters overwhelmingly supported,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. “I am relieved that the Court has once again rightly rejected this unfounded challenge. Although a loud faction remains determined to undermine bodily autonomy, the Michigan Constitution guarantees that decisions about your health belong to you. My office will continue to defend the reproductive freedom of Michiganders.”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was named as a defendant in the case along with Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, said the decision underlines every Michigander’s “right to make their own decisions about their own bodies.”

“I’m proud of this decision, which protects Proposal 3 and affirms the fundamental right to reproductive freedom in our Constitution. In Michigan, we’ll always fight like hell for your rights,” Whitmer said.

To have standing, the opinion explains, a plaintiff must demonstrate three things: that they suffered an injury that is “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent,” that the injury was caused by the defendant in the case, and that the injury is likely to be addressed by the relief sought in that case. 

Lawyers for Whitmer, Nessel and Benson argued that the plaintiffs, who included two parents of schoolchildren, two women who were pregnant or recently pregnant and Right to Life of Michigan, did not actually suffer an injury.

But the opinion said the real question concerned the other two criteria for standing — that the alleged injuries must be traceable to the actions of the defendants. 

For Whitmer and Nessel, the opinion states, “The primary allegation against the Governor and the Attorney General is that each is generally responsible for executing Michigan’s laws. This type of general allegation cannot support Plaintiffs’ standing because a state official’s general authority to enforce state law cannot satisfy traceability in the absence of ‘allegations about what the [official] has done, is doing, or might do to injure plaintiffs’.”

And for Benson, Bush continued, there was no allegation that she has any enforcement responsibility for the laws in question, and therefore the plaintiffs have not presented enough facts to show that they meet the requirements to claim standing.