They feared Idaho could prosecute over abortion pill billboard, so they sued
A New York-based health education nonprofit has sued Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador over alleged free speech violations after it says Labrador’s office prevented it from running a billboard campaign in Idaho offering information on abortion pills.
Mayday Health, which describes itself as a provider of reproductive health information, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho on May 29.
Attorney General’s Office spokesperson Damon Sidur told the Idaho Statesman in an emailed statement that the office “does not provide legal advice or interpretations to the public.” Sidur said the office would not comment further and cited the pending litigation.
According to the complaint filed by Mayday Health’s attorneys, the nonprofit planned and had paid for a mobile billboard campaign to be displayed on a truck driven around Nampa on April 20. The billboard would bear the message “Pregnant? Don’t want to be? Learn more at www.mayday.health.”
The website’s landing page asks “What do you need?” and offers options for abortion, morning after pills, birth control and gender-affirming care. The “abortion” page includes links to external websites that prescribe and ship medicines — mifepristone and misoprostol — across the country that are used to induce abortion. The same medications, which are FDA-approved, are also commonly used to manage miscarriages.
Last month, a federal court in Louisiana banned mail delivery of mifepristone as part of an abortion-related lawsuit. The U.S. Supreme Court put that ruling on hold.
Mayday Health said in the lawsuit that it has faced “meritless threats from hostile state attorneys general” in other states where it ran similar advertisements, and it contacted Labrador’s office on April 8 via email and FedEx as it anticipated “a negative reaction” to its billboard.
“The Attorney General — who disagrees with the lawful choices people may make with the information Mayday publishes, as well as Mayday’s conviction that access to abortion is a fundamental human right — has declared that Idaho law authorizes him to prohibit the promotion of abortions, even through speech alone,” the lawsuit says.
The nonprofit’s letter to Labrador’s office asserted that its billboard was protected by the First Amendment and cited a temporary injunction issued by the federal district court of the Southern District of New York in January that prevented the attorney general of South Dakota from taking legal action against Mayday for an identical billboard.
According to the lawsuit, Mayday Health requested that the Attorney General’s Office respond to its letter by April 15 and confirm it would not take action against the nonprofit or penalize it for displaying the billboard. When the date passed with no response, Mayday Health on April 17 forwarded its original correspondence to three deputy litigators — Jim Craig, Aaron Green and Kyle Grigsby — who have argued for the state in cases defending Idaho abortion laws. The nonprofit also left voicemails with each litigator and the office’s general line that same day, the complaint said.
Mayday Health said when it did not hear back from the Attorney General’s Office, it “reluctantly” canceled its mobile billboard in Nampa and forfeited the $11,375 it paid for the advertisement.
The nonprofit again contacted state officials on April 27, the complaint said. This time Mayday received a response from Craig, who this week is leading Idaho’s defense against a Boise maternal-fetal medicine specialist’s lawsuit that claims Idaho’s abortion restrictions prevent him from providing medically necessary abortions to patients with high-risk pregnancies.
Craig’s email response, which is included in the lawsuit as an exhibit, stated only, “The Attorney General does not provide legal advice to private parties.”
“The message from the Attorney General’s office was clear: Mayday should stay silent, or else speak at its peril,” the lawsuit says.
Mayday’s lawsuit noted that it’s illegal in Idaho for anyone other than health care providers to advertise or sell abortion medications, and it is a felony to “recruit” a minor to obtain an abortion under the state’s recent controversial “abortion trafficking” law.
The nonprofit said Labrador has indicated he has “broad enforcement authority” of those laws. It cited an analysis Labrador wrote for Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, in 2023 in which the attorney general wrote that an Idaho health care professional who refers a patient to an out-of-state abortion provider or writes a prescription for an abortion pill to be filled out of state would be violating state law. Labrador was sued by abortion rights advocacy groups shortly after the letter was published and, while he walked back the analysis by stating it was meant to be a private letter rather than a formal legal analysis, he didn’t disavow the interpretation.
Mayday Health also pointed to a lawsuit over Idaho’s abortion trafficking law in which it said “the Attorney General argued that ‘any speech’ intended to enable minors to obtain an out-of-state abortion ‘is integral to criminal conduct’ and thus unprotected and subject to penalties.”
The nonprofit said its billboard would be protected speech in Idaho because it is “a donor-funded information clearinghouse” that raises awareness and serves as an educational resource but does not sell or distribute abortion pills or benefit commercially from the billboards.
The lawsuit said Mayday Health is seeking a pre-enforcement declaration and injunction against potential penalties from its billboard. It said it still hopes to reschedule the mobile billboard in Nampa, along with other campaigns. In 2023, a Mayday Health mobile billboard truck in Boise was asked to leave city limits due to a city code prohibiting mobile billboards.
“In fact, while Mayday would like to publish this and other media in Idaho in the future — like gas station placards, boat-pulled signs, and aerial banners — those plans are on hold in light of the Attorney General’s unrenounced threats,” the lawsuit says.
