BOISE, ID – A federal judge denied Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the state’s near-total abortion ban, clearing the way for the legal challenge to go to trial.
The lawsuit, by Dr. Stacy Seyb, a maternal fetal medicine specialist, seeks court protections for medically necessary abortions. His lawsuit is against the Idaho Board of Medicine and Ada County Prosecuting Attorney Jan Bennetts.
In October, Labrador argued that the doctor admitted to not understanding how the state’s law works. The attorney general’s office asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed before trial through a motion for summary judgement.
“The Idaho Supreme Court told doctors in 2023 they have broad clinical judgment to provide necessary care,” Labrador said in a statement. “Dr. Seyb did not educate himself on what Idaho law permits, which is required of every doctor in Idaho. His patients suffered from his lack of understanding, not because of our laws.”
On Monday, federal judge B. Lynn Winmill denied Labrador’s office’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge wrote that Seyb “has established a genuine dispute of material fact.”
“Even to this Court, the contours of the life-of-the mother exception remain ambiguous,” Winmill wrote, adding that the doctor’s “deposition answers do not undermine his standing to bring this challenge.”
Winmill wrote that courts generally leave moral questions like abortion up to states. But, he wrote, the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment “exists to circumscribe what the state may force individuals to endure, and how far it may go when prioritizing some lives over others.”
“Idaho could not make a mother undergo a bone marrow transplant to save her child,” the judge wrote. “Can it require a pregnant woman to give up her ovaries or her kidneys in the hopes of saving a fetus? Answering that question will require the Court to weigh the evidence of our nation’s history, traditions, and practices. For that reason, this case must go to trial.”
In a statement, Idaho Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Damon Sidur critiqued the decision as misrepresenting the office’s argument and containing “clear legal errors.”
“We look forward to trial, where we will present expert medical and historical evidence that Idaho’s Defense of Life Act fully complies with all constitutional requirements, protects unborn life, and ensures doctors can make good faith medical decisions to keep women safe,” Sidur wrote.
Despite calls for change in the three years Idaho’s ban has been in place, including by the state’s top medical association, Idaho’s Republican supermajority-controlled Legislature has largely declined to modify Idaho’s strict abortion laws.
In the November 2026 election, Idaho residents might be able to vote on a ballot initiative to repeal the state’s strict abortion ban and add protections for reproductive rights. The group leading the initiative, called Idahoans United for Women and Families, announced in November that it was well on its way to qualifying for the ballot.
This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.
