O’Melveny Preserves Injunction Against North Dakota Abortion Ban

O’Melveny and the Center for Reproductive Rights successfully opposed the state Attorney General’s motion to vacate a nearly decade-old permanent injunction against enforcement of the state’s six-week abortion ban.

On behalf of Red River Women’s Clinic, North Dakota’s sole abortion clinic, the Center for Reproductive rights challenged the ban after it was enacted in 2013, winning a permanent injunction in 2014 against its enforcement. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, and the case had been closed for eight years.

In 2022, the Attorney General moved to reopen the case and dissolve the injunction in light of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade.

O’Melveny and the Center argued that reopening the case would waste judicial resources because of parallel state court litigation regarding the state’s trigger law banning all abortion, which, if permitted to take effect, would moot the six-week ban.

Judge Daniel L. Hovland of the District Court for the District of North Dakota agreed and rejected the Attorney General’s bid to reopen the case and dissolve the injunction.