The Department of Justice on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case involving the 17-year-old undocumented immigrant detainee who received an abortion last month after a weeks-long legal battle with the Trump administration, and to discipline the attorneys who represented her.
The Justice Department filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court this week, saying “Jane Doe’s” American Civil Liberties Union attorneys “misled” on the timing of the abortion.
“After informing Justice Department attorneys that the procedure would occur on October 26th, Jane Doe’s attorneys scheduled the abortion for the early morning hours of October 25th, thereby thwarting Supreme Court review,” Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said Friday.
O’Malley also said “discipline may be warranted” against Jane Doe’s attorneys.
The Justice Department argues the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Oct. 24 to allow the abortion to go forward “should be vacated.”
“The government asked to be kept informed of the timing of Ms. Doe’s abortion procedure, and one of respondent’s counsel agreed to do so,” the Justice Department lawyers argue. “Although Ms. Doe’s representatives informed the government of the change in timing, they did not inform the government of the other two developments — which kept the government in the dark about when Ms. Doe was scheduled to have an abortion.”
Because of that, the ruling allowing her to have an abortion should be vacated, “and the case should be remanded to the court of appeals with instructions to remand to the district court for dismissal of all claims for prospective relief regarding pregnant unaccompanied minors.”
This means the Justice Department believes a situation like this could come up again, and the agency wants to set a precedent for all lower courts to follow.
Trump administration and state-level officials — she was being held in a detention center in Texas — argued that because she was an illegal immigrant, she had no constitutional right to an elective abortion in the United States.
“People I don’t even know are trying to make me change my mind,” Doe said in a statement from the ACLU upon having her abortion. “I made my decision and that is between me and God. Through all of this, I have never changed my mind.”
In a statement, the ACLU called the allegations “baseless.”
“That government lawyers failed to seek judicial review quickly enough is their fault, not ours,” the group’s legal director, David Cole, said in a statement. “We won’t let this distract us from the real issue here, which is that there are many more young women like Jane Doe out there who are still unable to get the care they need because of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional policies. We will not stop fighting until we have justice for every young woman like Jane.”
Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News he was “disturbed” that Jane Doe was able to get an abortion before the Justice Department could file a brief or appeal to block the procedure.
“We’ll look at that and pursue it in any way possible,” Sessions said when asked if the Justice Department was ready to drop the issue. “I don’t believe that we should be using taxpayers’ dollars to fund abortions and I think, in this case, it certainly was not justified. We’ve resisted it steadfastly and I am very disappointed that these lawyers were able to take the client around the law to avoid a court hearing at least to see that we were filing.”
However, Jane Doe made it clear that taxpayer dollars were not used for her abortion, but rather she paid for it through donations from an undisclosed nonprofit organization.
