DES MOINES, Iowa — Three justices wrote opinions in Friday's Iowa Supreme Court's ruling on Gov. Kim Reynolds' "fetal heartbeat bill".
The 3-3 deadlock affirmed a lower court's 2019 ruling maintaining access to abortions up until the 20-week mark in pregnancy.
Three separate opinions were issued on the split ruling — a rare occurrence for the court.
In his opinion, Justice Thomas Waterman said the court generally tries to avoid issuing opinions when justices are divided on the decision.
"Filing opinions in this 3–3 matter is not our idea; our court’s longstanding practice has been to issue no opinions when the justices are evenly divided on the outcome," his opinion reads in part. "There are valid reasons for not writing at all in 3–3 cases. Anything that any justice says is just their personal advisory opinion."
The last time the court filed opinions following a 3-3 split decision was in 2009, when they ruled on State v. Effler.
Since the Effler ruling, the Iowa Supreme Court has had 18 cases where the court was divided 3-3. In all of those 18 cases, no opinion was filed.
Waterman's opinion supports letting the district court ruling stand. He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Justice Edward Mansfield.
The other two opinions were written by Justices Christopher McDonald and Matthew McDermott, who, along with Justice David May, wanted to overturn the district's ruling in favor of a six-week ban.
Below are brief summaries of each of the three opinions.
In Waterman's opinion on what he calls an "extraordinary" case, he highlights how the court previously denied a motion to revive the bill after agreeing the bill was unconstitutional under the undue burden standard.
He writes in part, "The State appealed, and now asks our court to do something that has never happened in Iowa history: to simultaneously bypass the legislature and change the law, to adopt rational basis review, and then to dissolve an injunction to put a statute into effect for the first time in the same case in which that very enactment was declared unconstitutional years earlier."
Waterman also claims it would be "legislating from the bench" to put the statute into effect.
The only possible appellate review, according to Waterman, is by writ of certiorari, which "can be sustained only if the district court acted illegally or outside its jurisdiction."
However, Waterman affirms that the court would likely deny the state's writ of certiorari, or otherwise annul it if the writ were granted:
"The unprecedented jurisdictional and procedural issues presented in this case fall away if the legislature enacts a new abortion law. Nothing like this case has come up in Iowa’s legal history before or is likely to come up again. For all these reasons, this case is a poor vehicle for certiorari review. We would decline to grant the writ."
McDonald, who was in favor of overturning the district court's ruling, cites Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
His opinion reads in part: "Under the rational basis standard, it is inequitable to continue to enjoin the State from enforcing a law that is now presumptively constitutional. Federal courts have begun to vacate similar permanent injunctions after Dobbs."
McDonald also relies on an Iowa Supreme Court ruling from 2022, which ruled that abortion is not constitutionally protected in Iowa.
Standing in opposition to Waterman, McDonald rejected the idea that the court lacks the authority to overturn the injunction, writing, "It is almost universally accepted (except by my colleagues today) that courts have inherent authority to modify or dissolve a permanent injunction based on changes in fact or law without regard to the passage of time."
Waterman also criticized his peers for letting the district court ruling stand:
"[they] sit as a three-person super general assembly, and hold the fetal heartbeat law unconstitutional. They do so despite waiting for and then receiving the wisdom of Dobbs. They do so despite this court’s controlling precedents. They do so despite the weight of the persuasive precedents and authorities. And they do so despite their personal precedents."
McDermott echoes many of the points made by McDonald, only writing separately "to respond more fully to several points that our colleagues raise."
He goes on to claim that three of his fellow justices are "[peddling] in speculation" and thoroughly rejected Waterman's assertion that they are "legislating from the bench".
His opinion reads in part: "It requires no further 'legislating' by or from us—or the legislature—to create a fetal heartbeat law in Iowa. Of course, it’s our colleagues who refuse to exercise discretion to decide this appeal and who thus keep in place the injunction that prevents the State from enforcing the statute."
McDermott also criticizes Waterman's decision to speculate on legislators' intentions and ultimately concludes that the court failed to do its job to its fullest extent.
"It isn’t for us to dictate abortion policy in the state, but simply to interpret and apply the law as best we can in cases that come before us. We fail the parties, the public, and the rule of law in our refusal today to apply the law and decide this case."
WATCH: U.S. Supreme Court temporarily extends access to abortion pill