A Kentucky woman filed a lawsuit in Jefferson County Circuit Court challenging two of the Commonwealth’s abortion bans that collectively eliminate almost all access to abortion in the Commonwealth. The case details the severe harms that Jane Doe, who is approximately eight weeks pregnant, and a class of all pregnant Kentuckians seeking abortion are enduring because the government has denied her access to the care she needs.

State legislatures are responsible for creating state legislative and U.S. congressional districts. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause that federal courts have no authority to review claims that states have sorted voters along partisan lines to favor one political party over others. However, challenges to partisan gerrymandering continue in many state courts, and this case involves one such constitutional challenge in Kentucky.

In 2023, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a new law that targets only those Kentuckians who “challenge the constitutionality” of a state statute or similar law and seek relief against a state defendant in state court. Under S.B. 126, any party to a covered lawsuit will have a unilateral right to require transfer of the case from the circuit court where it was properly filed to a randomly chosen circuit anywhere else in the state, potentially hundreds of miles away and at great cost to Kentuckians who stand up for their rights. The ACLU of Kentucky, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, and the Kentucky Resources Council—with representation from attorneys at the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative—filed an amicus brief in the Kentucky Supreme Court, asking the Court to hold that the law violates the Kentucky Constitution. In October, the Kentucky Supreme Court invalidated S.B. 126, ruling in favor of the ACLU.

The ACLU and attorneys at Lynch, Cox, Gilman & Goodman P.S.C. filed the federal lawsuit aimed at blocking unnecessary and unconstitutional state laws to prevent the closure of the state’s only abortion clinic, EMW Women’s Surgical Center. In March 2017, the state threatened to revoke the clinic’s license, alleging that the clinic’s agreements with a hospital and ambulance service contained technical deficiencies, even though the state approved those same agreements in renewing EMW’s license in 2016. Based on these alleged deficiencies, the state claimed that EMW was not incompliance with state law requiring abortion providers to have a transfer agreement with a local hospital and a transport agreement with an ambulance service.

In 2018, the ACLU and the ACLU of Kentucky filed suit on behalf of Kentucky abortion providers to challenge a state law banning physicians from providing a safe and medically proven abortion method called dilation and evacuation, or “D&E.” If it were to take effect, this law would prevent many patients from being able to obtain an abortion altogether. The law imposes serious harm on patients’ health and dignity.