Idaho legislators will have to restock their Constitutional Defense Fund — that is, the state’s money pot for private-practice appellate specialists in the Boise Bar — in short order. Idaho’s abortion laws clearly will cost Idaho taxpayers a lot of money during the years to come.
As a part of that, many of the specifics of the coming abortion regime in Idaho, the details that go beyond “pro-life” and “pro-choice” political catch phrases, soon are likely to undergo close examination. The picture that emerges will not be pretty.
One of the scenes from that review played out last week, as the Idaho Supreme Court’s procedural hearing (they haven’t figured out yet even how to litigate all the abortion law issues, much less sift through the legal merits) tried to work through what one of the justices called with understatement “a bit of a maze.”
The Biden administration’s legal case filed on Tuesday against the state of Idaho, which was separate from that, may be an indicator, too, as a hint of things to come. It was not, as some people may think, a sweeping attack — “a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s pro-life law,” Gov. Brad Little said. His response, that “the U.S. Justice Department’s interference with Idaho’s pro-life law is another example of Biden overreaching yet again” was simply a pro forma political statement, not a meaningful riposte on the substance.
To back up: The Idaho law allows a prosecutor to file criminal charges and obtain the arrest of a physician shown to have...
Attorneys for three friends of Nolan Xavier Wells filed six more defamation lawsuits Tuesday in federal and state court, accusing social media users of making false claims about the young men in co...