Advocates who counsel and aid Idaho teenagers in search of abortion care filed suit Tuesday against Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador in a bid to overturn the state’s abortion travel ban.

The travel ban, which took effect May 5, created the crime of “abortion trafficking,” punishable by a minimum of two years in prison. It forbids helping an individual under 18 years old obtain abortion pills or leave the state for abortion care without parental permission.

The grievance, filed in federal court in Boise, Idaho, says the ban infringes on the suitable to interstate travel and on First Amendment rights to discuss abortion and “engage in expressive conduct, including providing monies and transportation (and other support) for pregnant minors traveling inside and outdoors of Idaho.”

The suit also says the travel ban “lacks clarity” and “invites arbitrary enforcement,” raising the specter of traffic stops of ladies of reproductive age, and infringes on the suitable of individuals to cross the border into neighboring states, including Washington, where minors can legally obtain abortion care without parental consent.

Wendy Heipt, senior reproductive health and justice counsel at Legal Voice, an advocacy group representing the plaintiffs, said Idaho’s law prohibits “recruiting or harboring a minor, but what constitutes recruiting? Giving information? You’ll be able to’t stop [my clients] from providing details about conduct that’s legal in one other state.”

She added, “If we would like to provide money to a minor to go to a different state, we must always give you the chance to try this.”

Legal experts say the ban, based on a model bill written by National Right to Life, one in all the country’s largest anti-abortion groups, is designed to sidestep implied constitutional protections for interstate travel.

The plaintiffs include the Indigenous Idaho Alliance, a nonprofit that has helped pregnant minors access abortion care outside the state; the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which provided financial assistance to 166 Idahoans in 2022, including 18 minors; and Lourdes Matsumoto, an attorney who works with victims of domestic and sexual violence, a lot of whom are minors.

Domestic violence advocates “do not know what advice they can provide people,” Matsumoto said. “Within the shelters, they’re confused about what information they will and can’t give out without putting themselves in legal jeopardy.” She said the teenager travel ban has had a chilling effect on her work with teenagers coping with the trauma of sexual assault.

Idaho’s law, the primary within the nation to explain “abortion trafficking,” requires a minimum two-year prison sentence for any adult who acts “with the intent to hide an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor.”

Idaho criminalizes helping minors travel out of state to get an abortionPlay

But Matsumoto, who has two teenage nieces, said the law fails to detail what constitutes parental consent. “If my niece involves me and says, ‘My mom says that is OK; can you are taking me to Oregon?’ — is that enough that the mom consented? Am I going to have to return back, get arrested, lose my law license, then go to court and say, ‘The mom said it’s OK’? Is it a nod? A thumbs-up in a text message?”

The lawsuit cites a legal opinion dated March 27 from Labrador that “stated that medical professionals who refer pregnant patients across state lines for either medical or chemical abortions violate Idaho’s Total Abortion Ban,” a separate law that went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights last yr in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Labrador withdrew the opinion on April 7, facing a legal challenge over constitutional rights of speech and movement.

“It’s unconstitutional to forbid residents from traveling since you disapprove of the explanations they’re driving to a different state,” Heipt said. “Idahoans, like all people, ought to be free to travel inside and between states without the specter of prison, even in the event that they are traveling for a reason other people disagree with.”

Idaho patients, including teenagers, have long crossed into Washington state to legally end their pregnancies. But fewer than 5% of patients at Planned Parenthood clinics in Washington who come for abortion care are minors, in accordance with Karl Eastlund, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho.

Most of those patients, he said, do involve their parents in the method, although parental consent shouldn’t be mandatory in Washington. Those that don’t, Eastlund said, have good reason to not. Some are in dangerous, abusive situations wherein disclosing a pregnancy could put them vulnerable to further harm.

The lawsuit in Idaho cites Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, wherein he claimed states couldn’t bar residents from going to other states for abortions.

“May a State bar a resident of that State from traveling to a different state to acquire an abortion?” Kavanaugh wrote. “For my part, the reply is not any based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.”

But relatively than settle the query of whether states can prohibit traveling for an abortion, Heipt said, “Dobbs unleashed chaos. What’s next?”