This month marks the third anniversary of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and held that there was no federal constitutional right to abortion. The Court said it was returning decisions about abortion regulation “to the people and their elected representatives.” Strikingly, the decision didn’t mention state courts.

But it’s state judges who interpret the scope of state abortion restrictions and define state constitutional rights to abortion access. In the aftermath of Dobbs, a flood of state litigation challenged trigger laws and other bans that sought to immediately block abortions after federal protections disappeared. Since 2022, dozens of major rulings have yielded widely varying results.

This kind of litigation continues, and new legal issues have also emerged in the three years since Dobbs. Recent cases in Florida and Missouri — both covered by UC Davis School of Law professor Mary Ziegler in State Court Report — highlight some of the next generation questions to watch.

The first is what happens after a state passes a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights. In Missouri, voters passed an abortion rights amendment in November, making it one of 10 states to codify explicit abortion protections in its constitution since Dobbs. A state law banning virtually all abortions is now unconstitutional. But Missouri still has restrictions on the books — such as onerous licensing requirements for clinics and a 72-hour waiting period — which providers say create substantial hurdles to abortion care. Does Missouri’s amendment limit the state’s ability to impose these kinds of restrictions?

Last week, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned a trial court injunction that had blocked these laws. As Ziegler explains, it was a procedural ruling: The court held that the trial court had applied the wrong legal standard because it didn’t assess whether the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits. But while the court didn’t reach the substance of the claims, the practical effect of the ruling is to halt abortions. After the decision, clinics in the state canceled appointments and advised patients to travel out of state.

The case now goes back to the trial court, and any consideration of a new injunction is likely to take at least a month. A lot of uncertainty remains, but what’s clear, Ziegler argues, “is that simply passing a constitutional amendment protecting reproductive rights is not enough to guarantee access to abortion.”

Similar disputes are playing out elsewhere. In Arizona, a lawsuit challenging abortion restrictions under its 2024 abortion rights amendment was filed last month. And in Michigan, a trial court recently entered a permanent injunction blocking several abortion restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period, under that state’s 2022 amendment. The court emphasized that the restrictions were “not consistent with the accepted standard of care and evidence-based medicine.”

The litigation in Arizona, Michigan, and Missouri all relates to whether state constitutions protect access to abortion. A recent intermediate appellate case in Florida, however, highlights a second emerging issue: how constitutions can be used to limit abortion access.

In Doe v. Uthmeier, a Florida appellate court struck down a state law that allowed minors to bypass parental consent requirements with judicial approval. The court ruled that the procedure violated the rights of parents, denying them one of “the most basic due-process guarantees — notice and opportunity to be heard — on the question whether they must forfeit an important parental right that the state and federal constitutions secure to them.” The court based its ruling on the U.S. Constitution, while stressing that Florida’s constitution provides even broader protections for parental rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court split evenly last month over whether approving a Catholic school’s charter application would violate the state and federal constitutions. The split — which had the effect of leaving in place the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that such a charter was unconstitutional — “announces, pragmatically speaking, a permissive policy: States may, but need not, exclude religious schools from their charter programs,” writes Fordham University School of Law professor Aaron Saiger. Read more

“While state courts are not tethered to Dobbs or its brand of originalism, the influence it has had on state courts deciding abortion rights cases is undeniable,” write Diana Kasdan and Amanda Barrow of UCLA Law’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. In multiple cases since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to abortion, state high courts have considered historical evidence and still embraced protections for abortion care. Read more

Since 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court has rolled back civil rights under the state constitution, writes Kyle Barry of the State Law Research Initiative, and in doing so relied in their decisions on an odd and highly criticized rule: a requirement that claimants prove challenged statutes are unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt. Read more

“Most provisions in Virginia’s 1776 Declaration of Rights have survived relatively intact,” but interpretation of the state’s current constitution, which took effect in July 1971, continues to evolve, as a 2023 state supreme court decision heralded “a new era of independent interpretation of Virginia’s Bill of Rights,” writes Wake Forest University professor John Dinan. This essay is part of State Court Report’s 50-state series on the nation’s constitutions. Read more

Each month, we highlight notable upcoming state supreme court arguments. For June, State Court Report’s Sarah Kessler and Erin Geiger Smith write about high courts in Hawaii, Oregon, South Carolina, and Washington taking up issues including partisan gerrymandering, fines and fees imposed on indigent defendants, and bans on flavored tobacco and online vision tests. Read more

Paxton v. Annunciation House, Texas Supreme Court
Unanimously held that the Texas Constitution authorizes the state attorney general to bring an action to shut down a Catholic charity on the basis of allegations that it violated a state law against harboring undocumented immigrants. State religious freedom protections do not bar the claim from being filed, and the law is neither unconstitutionally vague nor precluded by federal immigration law. The case will continue in the trial court. // Courthouse News Service

Stephens v. State, Georgia Supreme Court
Unanimously upheld, under the state’s right to bear arms clause, a law banning Georgians younger than 21 from carrying handguns in public, unless they have military training. The court declined to import federal Second Amendment standards into Georgia’s clause, noting that it distinctly and expressly grants the legislature power to regulate the manner in which firearms may be carried. // Georgia Public Broadcasting

City of Wenatchee v. Stearns, Washington Supreme Court
Upheld the legality, under Washington’s private affairs clause and the Fourth Amendment, of a police stop that was based on information received in a 911 call. Such a stop is lawful when circumstances indicate that the tip is reliable and contains a factual basis to give the officer reasonable suspicion of a crime, even if the manner in which the caller gathered the facts conveyed in the tip is not established. // NCWLIFE

Norfolk Southern Railway Company v. State Corporation Commission, Virginia Supreme Court
Unanimously held that a law permitting broadband service providers to install fiber optic cables across railroad property violates a state constitutional takings amendment when applied to a private company seeking to expand its network for financial gain. The Virginia amendment was enacted in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 holding in Kelo v. City of New London that a taking for economic development purposes satisfies the Fifth Amendment’s “public use” requirement for eminent domain. // Cardinal News

You can find briefs and opinions from notable state constitutional lawsuits in our State Case Database.