“The right to interstate travel is one of our most fundamental constitutional rights,” U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote in a preliminary ruling issued late Monday.
The plaintiffs, including an organization called the Yellowhammer Fund that helps women obtain out-of-state abortions, sued Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall after he threatened to prosecute anyone who “aids and abets” in an abortion.
In a related lawsuit that was combined with the abortion fund’s, a group of health providers sued Marshall because he explicitly threatened providers with felony charges for assisting Alabamians seeking to travel out of state to obtain an abortion.
The right to travel out of state has been watched by advocates on both sides of the abortion rights debate ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated constitutional protections for abortion.
“Alabama can no more restrict people from going to, say, California to engage in what is lawful there than California can restrict people from coming to Alabama to do what is lawful here,” Thompson wrote.
Alabama bans nearly all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. Nearly two dozen states have banned or heavily limited access to abortion, and abortion rights advocates fear states may try to advance travel bans.
Already, some cities and counties in Texas passed local ordinances making it illegal to transport someone through the region for purposes of seeking an abortion.
But Thompson said the threats from Marshall to act similarly are not constitutional.
“The Constitution protects the right to cross state lines and engage in lawful conduct in other states, including receiving an abortion,” he wrote. “Travel is valuable precisely because it allows us to pursue opportunities available elsewhere.”