Labrador, Idaho Legislature use legal ambiguity against free speech | Opinion
Attorney General Raúl Labrador and the Idaho Legislature have deployed a mixture of explicit laws and legal ambiguity to assault freedom of speech in Idaho.
Federal courts should slap down these efforts immediately.
As the Idaho Statesman’s Nicole Blanchard reported, the group Mayday Health, which provides information about abortions, filed suit against Labrador late last month, seeking an injunction that would prevent him from prosecuting them for taking out billboards that refer Idaho residents to its website, which provides information on abortion, the morning after pill, birth control and gender-affirming care.
Idaho has laws against advertising abortion and specifically advertising abortion pills, and in a 2023 legal opinion, Labrador stated that “promotion” of abortion pills would constitute a felony under that statute.
That’s a horrendously vague standard coupled with very high consequences. Mayday therefore sought assurances from Labrador that it would not be prosecuted for a large purchase of advertising for its website, which includes factual information about abortion pills but not the ability to purchase them. Labrador refused, leaving them in legal limbo, and so they canceled the billboards.
This is not about your position on the legality of abortion. This is about your position on freedom of speech.
Labrador and the Idaho Legislature have wielded ambiguity as a weapon, leaving groups like Mayday Health unable to exercise free speech in this state.
“Go ahead. Speak up now. Find out later if you’ll be charged with multiple felonies,” goes the implicit threat.
Under a legal regime like that, the First Amendment becomes meaningless window dressing.
The public square should be a place where speech is unimpeded by the threat of prosecution except in very narrow, particular circumstances — things like fraud, intending to incite imminent violence, etc. It’s clear that freedom can’t be maintained unless Labrador is enjoined from seeking to prosecute people involved in free speech on the topic of abortion.
This is particularly true because it’s obvious that these laws intend to attack one set of political viewpoints.
You can find websites all over the internet with false medical information — websites recommending healing crystals for your cancer, the carnivore diet to restore your virility or ivermectin for, well, anything that ails you. And it is not hard to find websites that advocate the death sentence for people involved in obtaining or providing abortions — indeed that’s the expressed position of some Idaho lawmakers. Both of these operate free and clear in Idaho, as they should. You’re allowed to say false things you believe are true and to hold political positions even if they are vile.
That a pro-abortion-rights group could face felony prosecution for providing accurate medical information demonstrates something very particular: This is not about the health of patients but of discriminating against a particular political viewpoint. The point is to enforce a regime of political censorship.
The courts should recognize this for what it is — an abusive chilling of free speech — by enjoining the state of Idaho and Labrador from prosecuting Mayday for purchasing billboards and offering information about abortion.
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.