WASHINGTON, D.C. – Attorney General Karl A. Racine joined with 16 other attorneys general to file an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of women’s access to reproductive health care. The brief was filed in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates et al v. Becerra et al., in which the operators of “crisis pregnancy centers” – which advise women against seeking abortion care – are fighting California’s Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act. The state law requires clinics to inform clients about public programs that provide free or low-cost contraception, abortion, and other family-planning services.
In the brief, the attorneys general argue that state disclosure requirements are vital to ensuring patients have the information they need to make timely, well-informed decisions about their health, safety, and legal rights, and that the amici States have a compelling interest in ensuring they can continue to rely on such modest, factual disclosures to provide key information to their residents.
Click here to read the full brief, which was led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and includes the attorneys general of the District, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington state.
More Information about California’s FACT Act
California’s FACT Act requires certain state-licensed medical clinics to notify their patients that the county health department offers information about “public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women.” The Act also requires certain unlicensed clinics to notify their patients that the clinics are not licensed as a medical facility by California.
As the amicus brief filed by the Attorneys General states, “The disclosure rule protects patients by providing them with important information about pregnancy-related services early enough that they can make fully informed decisions about the most appropriate medical care for their circumstances—whether prenatal care of various kinds, or abortion induced by medication or surgery. And the rule preserves clinics’ speech interests by requiring only a neutral disclosure of uncontested facts about the availability of free or low-cost pregnancy-related services—including not only services provided by the clinics (such as prenatal care), but also other services that California has reasonably determined women should be aware of before committing to important healthcare choices affecting their pregnancies.”
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California denied the petitioners’ motion for a preliminary injunction; that decision was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which concluded that the petitioners were unlikely to succeed on their First Amendment challenges because both disclosure rules are narrowly tailored to serve the State’s substantial public health and patient-protection interests. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on March 20, 2018.