Arkansas judge says lawsuit challenging state’s abortion ban can go forward

A Pulaski County judge ruled Friday that the lawsuit seeking to overturn Arkansas’ near-total abortion ban can continue.

Circuit Judge Cara Connors granted motions to dismiss Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the state of Arkansas as defendants in the case, but said that Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin, three state prosecutors and the Arkansas Medical Board will remain as defendants in the case. 

Connors has not ruled on the request to block the law from six women and an obstetrician-gynecologist who are challenging the ban. The judge said dismissing Sanders and the state as defendants doesn’t remove that as a possibility.

“Dismissing the state does not diminish the relief available to plaintiffs,” she wrote. “Plaintiffs seek only prospective declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of the challenged laws. That relief remains available, if warranted, against the officer defendants charged with enforcing them.”

Arkansas has among the nation’s strictest abortion bans, and the challenge against it is the first filed by Amplify Legal. Amplify Legal is the litigation arm of Abortion in America, an abortion-rights advocacy group co-founded by the late Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.

The challenged law bans the procedure with a narrow exception to save the life of a pregnant person in an emergency. It does not include exceptions for rape or incest.

It went into effect in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion, leaving the matter up to the states.

At a September hearing over the state’s motion to dismiss, Connors pushed back on Solicitor General Autumn Hamit Patterson’s assertion that the abortion ban is reasonable and not vague.

In Friday’s order, Connors sided with Patterson’s argument that the state has sovereign immunity, meaning it cannot be sued in its own courts. Connors cited this standard as her reason for dismissing the state and the governor as defendants.

Amplify Legal’s attorneys argue that the abortion ban not only is unconstitutionally vague but also infringes on Arkansans’ constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“We are confident in the strength of our clients’ claims and await the court’s decision on immediate relief,” Amplify Legal wrote in a Monday news release.

Griffin’s office will appeal Connors’ partial denial of the motion to dismiss “and will continue to vigorously defend Arkansas’ duly passed laws that protect innocent life,” spokesperson Jeff LeMaster said.

Arkansas law makes it a felony punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, a maximum fine of $100,000 or both for a medical professional who performs an abortion.

Since its filing in January, the lawsuit has drawn national attention.

Five of the six women challenging the ban had nonviable pregnancies between 2022 and 2026, and four traveled to Kansas or Illinois to receive abortions. The fifth continued her nonviable pregnancy for weeks after being denied an abortion, and she began planning her funeral in case she did not survive, according to court documents.

The sixth woman plaintiff ended her pregnancy because she did not want children, according to court documents.

Connors dismissed the case in April under a 2025 state law changing how circuit courts handle constitutional challenges. She revived the case in May after the state Supreme Court struck down those changes to such challenges.

Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana sue states with shield laws protecting abortion-pill providers

The court has yet to set a date for the hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.

Patterson argued at September’s hearing that the defendants, including Griffin, do not enforce Arkansas’ abortion ban. Two days after the hearing, Griffin joined the Alabama and Louisiana attorneys general in suing three Democratic-led states over laws that grant immunity to doctors who prescribe abortion-inducing medication to people in states where it is illegal.

Amplify Legal wrote a letter to Connors in October arguing that the defendants “cannot claim sovereign immunity from suit in one court only to turn around and assert sovereignty to enforce the same law in different courts.”

Patterson wrote in response that Griffin’s litigation over abortion shield laws “does nothing to help Plaintiffs show that the Attorney General has authority to enforce the Challenged Laws or that their Amended Complaint’s allegations overcome his sovereign immunity.”