A Wyoming judge on Monday blocked the state from enforcing abortion restrictions included in a new law that protects doctors who prescribe off-label medications.
In his nine-page ruling, District Judge Thomas T.C. Campbell sided with a group of abortion rights advocates who argued the law, which is set to go into effect Tuesday, would indirectly ban common abortion medications by threatening doctors and pharmacists with disciplinary action for prescribing the drugs for off-label use. The plaintiffs asked Campbell to halt enforcement while their broader lawsuit against abortion restrictions in Wyoming plays out.
Campbell rejected arguments from state attorneys defending the law as simply attempting to align the statute with two abortion bans that lawmakers passed in 2023. A different judge struck down both of those bans last year, and the Wyoming Supreme Court is now weighing an appeal on that case.
State attorneys further argued the new statute merely made clear that off-label prescriptions for non-abortion drugs would be protected under Wyoming law. Campbell, however, was unconvinced.
“To argue that the statute does not prohibit the off-label prescription of abortion-inducing drugs but merely permits off-label use for other indications, is a strained and untenable reading,” he wrote. “If the statute excludes abortion-related prescriptions from the safe harbor it creates, then it necessarily treats those prescriptions as not lawful under this provision.
“Suggesting that this exclusion simply ‘does not make it illegal’ but instead merely withholds new authorization is semantic hair-splitting; in practical terms, the statute draws a bright line between permissible off-label uses and those it aims to restrict, abortion among them,” Campbell continued. “For these reasons, the court cannot accept the State Defendants’ claim that the Wyoming Off-Label Protection Laws do not attempt to limit access to abortion medication when that is precisely what it does.”
The most common regimen of abortion medications includes the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol. Typically, a patient takes mifepristone first, then misoprostol later.
Health care amendment
Campbell’s ruling is the latest in a string of court victories for abortion access advocates in Wyoming. The same group of plaintiffs — including Casper’s Wellspring Health Access, the state’s lone abortion clinic — successfully challenged the 2023 abortion bans and convinced Campbell earlier this year to temporarily block additional restrictions, including a mandatory ultrasound and 48-hour waiting period.
All of those challenges have pointed to a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, which protects people’s rights to make their own health care decisions. That amendment allows legislators to enact certain restrictions, but the government must demonstrate a compelling public interest in doing so.
The government, Campbell wrote, did not identify such an interest, nor could the court independently find one.
“Thus, because provisions of the Wyoming Off-Label Protection Laws interfere with one’s fundamental right to make healthcare decisions, and the laws achieve no apparent compelling government interest, at this stage in the proceedings, the court finds that there is a likelihood of success that Plaintiffs prevail on their challenge to the constitutionality of the
statute, both facially and as applied,” he wrote.
Common prescription practice
In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approves medications for certain uses and in certain doses. But doctors commonly prescribe medications for off-label purposes — in other words, uses not approved by the FDA. For example, doctors sometimes prescribe propranolol for anxiety even though it’s been approved as a blood pressure medication. A medication in a different dose than what the FDA approved would also qualify as off-label use.
Interest in protecting the practice of off-label prescriptions grew in the wake of the COVID pandemic, when some providers faced possible disciplinary action for prescribing hydroxychloroquine, an FDA-approved malaria drug, to treat the virus. Then Rep. Sarah Penn, R-Lander, drafted a bill protecting off-label prescriptions in 2023, but it failed to advance.
Earlier this year, Rep. Gary Brown, R-Cheyenne, successfully brought back a similar measure. House Bill 164, “Medical prescriptions-off-label purposes,” codified the practice of prescribing off-label medications in Wyoming. But it specified those protections did not apply to schedule I or II controlled substances (such as heroin or fentanyl), gender care for children and medications intended to induce an abortion.
Wyoming has a good law. You have the freedom to choose your own healthcare. The legislator wrote the law and now they can’t live with it, go figure.
What with all thats on, I don’t
Understand why people in the great state of Wyoming are so worried about people’s underwear. Mine your own business.
It’s like children write these laws. The property tax thing is embarrassing. It’s like none of them can read. Or even have an interest in the state constitution. Or even care. So why, then, are any of these people even in Cheyenne to begin with??? Because if the only thing that matters is the 2nd amendment, well, there’s a lot more on Earth to living than shooting each other. At least one would think.