In a state where politics often moves faster than the wind, Wyoming’s Supreme Court hit the brakes on a sweeping abortion crackdown.
The Hill reported that on Tuesday, the court ruled 4-1 that abortion will remain legal in Wyoming, undoing the nation’s first post–Roe v. Wade abortion pill ban and siding with the plaintiffs who said the 2023 law violated the state constitution’s protections for adult health care decisions.
The dispute centered on Wyoming’s Life is a Human Right Act of 2023, a law designed to prohibit abortions in the state and explicitly ban the abortion pill.
The case was brought by Wellspring Health Access, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, all of whom challenged the 2023 restrictions under Wyoming’s constitution.
The plaintiffs argued the law ran into a constitutional problem: adults, they said, have the right to make their own health care decisions.
State attorneys pushed back with a blunt claim, arguing abortion is not health care, and therefore banning it cannot violate Wyoming’s constitution, as reported by The Associated Press.
Court filings said three justices emphasized the court “has an independent role in deciding what test applies” to evaluate whether the 2023 laws violate the state constitution.
Those filings also said the majority looked to prior cases and Article 1, Section 38, concluding “strict scrutiny” was the proper standard to apply.
That choice matters, because strict scrutiny is not the kind of legal speed bump the state can casually roll over; it forces the government to justify its work with precision, not slogans.
The filings laid out the demands of that standard: “Under that test, the State must prove the 2023 abortion laws were written as narrowly as possible to achieve the State’s interest in protecting prenatal life — that the abortion laws were the least burdensome way the State could achieve that goal without unjustifiably restricting a woman’s constitutional right to decide whether to terminate or continue a pregnancy.”
In plain terms, the court wasn’t weighing feelings or hashtags; it was requiring the state to show its restrictions were tightly drawn and minimally restrictive while still pursuing its stated interest.
If you write a sweeping ban, the court effectively said, don’t act surprised when you’re asked whether it was the least restrictive way to reach your goal.
Wyoming Supreme Court Justice John Fenn concluded the “state failed to prove the 2023 laws were ‘reasonable and necessary restrictions’ on the right to make one’s own health care decisions.”
That line is the heart of the decision: the state didn’t just lose an argument, it failed the court’s required showing under the constitutional framework the majority applied.
Supporters of the 2023 law may call this judicial overreach, but the filings underscore the court’s view that it must independently determine the legal test, not simply accept the state’s preferred framing.
The decision also underscored how the post-2022 legal landscape keeps pushing abortion disputes into state courts and state constitutions after the U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Wyoming’s pill ban stood out precisely because it was billed as the first of its kind after that shift, and Tuesday’s ruling wipes it off the books for now.
At the same time, the ruling landed as national Republicans continued to argue over how far federal policy should go in limiting abortion funding.
The Wyoming decision came shortly before President Trump told House Republicans on Tuesday to be “flexible” with demands to restrict federal funding flowing toward ObamaCare-funded health care plans that cover abortion.
Those comments came amid negotiations over a potential deal to revive ObamaCare subsidies that expired at the start of the new year.
Top Republicans have fought to include new restrictions on federal funding for insurance-covered abortion services, a familiar battle line in Washington even when a court ruling is focused on a state constitution.
The Hyde Amendment and other laws prevent federal funding from covering abortion, but they do not prohibit Affordable Care Act plans from covering abortions if those abortions are funded by state or private funding.
That nuance is exactly why the funding fight keeps resurfacing: people hear “no federal money” and assume the question is settled, while policy details keep the argument alive.
For Wyoming, though, the immediate result is straightforward: the state’s highest court struck down the 2023 abortion restrictions, keeping abortion legal and telling lawmakers that if they want a ban, they’ll have to clear the constitution — not just the headlines.
