Case: Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. State 

Court: Utah Supreme Court

Citation: 554 P.3d 998 (Utah 2024).

Holding: The Utah Supreme Court upheld a preliminary injunction against a state law prohibiting abortion at any stage of pregnancy in all but three circumstances, concluding serious questions were raised as to whether the law violates the state constitution’s equal rights provision and unenumerated rights to bodily integrity and to make decisions about one’s family free from undue government interference.  

Constitutional Claims: (1) Bodily integrity under due process clause; (2) family composition under various provisions of article I; (3) equal rights provision; (4) uniform operation of laws provision; (5) freedom of conscience based on religious liberty provision; and (6) privacy based on search and seizure provision.

Key Reasoning: The court explained that although it would interpret the Utah Constitution by focusing on its original public meaning, “look[ing] to history and tradition as part of the inquiry into what statehood-era Utahns would have understood the constitution’s text to mean,” it could from that analysis identify broader constitutionally protected principles.  Id. at 1025-26.  The court rejected the argument that the precise interest at issue in the case must be deeply rooted in history and tradition, highlighting that its “constitutional inquiry asks whether specific conduct falls within the umbrella of protected rights, not whether people have a recognized right to be free of a particular form of governmental interference with that right.”  Id. at 1026 (cleaned up).  The court indicated that it is consistent with its interpretive approach and prior cases to argue that the Utah Constitution protects the rights to bodily integrity and to make decisions about one’s family free from undue government interference, which encompasses a right to choose to seek an abortion. Id. at 1026, 1035.

Like the Kansas Supreme Court in Hodes, the Utah Supreme Court dismissed the argument that the state constitution could not be interpreted to protect a right to abortion because of Utah’s history of criminalizing abortion. The court reasoned that its “interpretive task is to determine what principles the people of Utah enshrined in the constitution” and then independently apply those principles to the case before the court; the court “look[s] to understand the principle embedded in the constitution and not how the people of Utah who put it in the constitution would have applied that principle.”  Id. at 1028-29. The court stressed that “[f]ailure to distinguish between principles and application of those principles would hold constitutional protections hostage to the prejudices of the 1890s.”  Id. at 1028.

Case Status/Subsequent History: This decision, issued in August 2024, temporarily enjoined enforcement of the law.