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North Dakota judge strikes down state’s near-total ban on abortions
A state judge vacated North Dakota’s near-total ban on abortion Thursday, saying that the state constitution creates a fundamental right to access abortion before a fetus is viable.
North Dakota has a near-total abortion ban on the books, with very few exceptions, because of a state law that went into effect in April 2023. In his ruling, state District Judge Bruce Romanick also said that the law violates the state constitution because it is too vague.
Romanick was ruling on a request from the state to dismiss a 2022 lawsuit filed against the ban by what at the time was the sole abortion clinic in North Dakota. The clinic has sinced moved across the border to Minnesota, and the state argued that a trial wouldn’t make a difference. The judge had canceled a trial set for August.
“Pregnant women in North Dakota have a fundamental right to choose abortion before viability exists under the enumerated and unenumerated interests provided by the North Dakota Constitution,” the judge wrote.
Romanick cited how North Dakota Constitution’s guarantees “inalienable rights,” including “life and liberty.”
“The abortions statutes at issue in this case infringes on a woman’s fundamental right to procreative autonomy, and are not narrowly tailored to promote womens’ health or to protect unborn human life,” Romanick wrote in his 24-page order. “The law as currently drafted takes away a woman’s liberty and her right to pursue and obtain safety and happiness.”
Romanick was first elected a district judge in heavily-GOP North Dakota in 2000 and has been reelected every six years since, most recently in 2018. Before he was a judge, he was an assistant state’s attorney in Burleigh County, home to the state capital of Bismarck.
The judge acknowledged in his ruling that in the past, the North Dakota courts had previously relied on federal court precedents on abortion, but said those state precedents had been “upended” by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion under the U.S. Constitution.
Romanick said he’d been left with “relatively no idea” how the North Dakota Supreme Court would address the issue, and so his ruling was his “best effort” to “apply the law as written to the issue presented” while protecting the fundamental rights of the state’s residents.
In many respects, Romanick’s order mirrors one from the Kansas Supreme Court in 2019, declaring access to abortion a fundamental right under similar provisions in that state’s constitution, though the Kansas court did not limit its ruling to before a fetus is viable. Voters in Kansas affirmed that position in an August 2022 statewide vote.
Romanick concluded that the law is too vague because it does not set clear enough standards for determining whether exceptions apply, leaving doctors open to being prosecuted because others disagree with their judgments. North Dakota law prohibits abortion in all cases except rape or incest — if the woman has been pregnant less than six weeks — and if needed to prevent the death or serious health risk to the woman.
The Red River Women’s Clinic, which was North Dakota’s sole abortion provider, filed the original lawsuit in 2022 against the state’s now-repealed trigger ban, weeks after the fall of Roe v. Wade. The clinic afterward moved from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota.
In 2023, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature revised the state’s abortion laws, making abortion legal in pregnancies caused by rape or incest, but only in the first six weeks of pregnancy. Under the revised law, abortion was allowed later in pregnancy only in specific medical emergencies.
Soon after that, the clinic, joined by several doctors in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine, filed an amended complaint. The plaintiffs alleged the abortion ban violates the state constitution because it its unconstitutionally vague about its exceptions for doctors, and that its health exception is too narrow.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
