September 8, 2016

Wisconsin Taxpayers Just Got Stuck Paying $1.6 Million for the State’s Abortion Fight

This is at least the fourth time in recent months that courts have awarded fees.

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The Wisconsin Department of Justice agreed Thursday to pay $1.6 million in attorney fees and other legal costs to Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and several other plaintiffs who successfully challenged one of the state’s abortion laws.

The case challenged the requirement that abortion providers in Wisconsin have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. In March 2015, a district court judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional. The state of Wisconsin twice appealed the case, driving up legal costs for the plaintiffs. In both appeals, the state lost: The circuit court agreed with the initial court’s decision, as did the US Supreme Court this June, rejecting the case the day after it overturned a similar admitting-privileges provision in Texas. Now Wisconsin taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the legal costs from the appeals.

“This settlement should send a message to politicians that laws that are designed to obstruct a woman’s access to an abortion are not only unconstitutional, but they are a misuse of taxpayer resources,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the reproductive freedom project at the ACLU, in an emailed statement to Mother Jones.

This settlement comes on the heels of similar legal fee awards in three other states. In March, North Carolina had to pay $1 million to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood, and the ACLU after losing a federal lawsuit over a law requiring providers to show women seeking abortions ultrasound images of their fetuses, accompanied by a description of the image contents from their physician, at least four hours before getting the procedure. The state also appealed the decision multiple times, driving up the legal tab. Ultimately, North Carolina had to dip into an emergency fund to pay the settlement.

In August, Alabama agreed to pay $1.7 million in legal costs to Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and other groups after they successfully challenged a state law requiring hospital admitting privileges for abortion providers. In the same week, a Missouri district court required the state to pay $156,000 in legal fees to Planned Parenthood Great Plains after the court struck down the state’s admitting-privileges law.

“Not only are these laws devastating to women’s health, but politicians are also seeing the steep price for taxpayers,” said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in an emailed statement. “It is time to stop these political attacks on people’s health and rights.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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