Opinion ID: 797832
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Scope and Meaning of the Statute and the Attorney General's Opinion

Text: 22 The district court found that the Act imposed an undue burden by prohibiting the D & E procedure, and failed to contain an adequate exception to protect the woman's health and life. In challenging both of these determinations, the state contends that the district court did not give adequate deference to the Attorney General's Opinion.
23 Michigan does not challenge the plaintiffs' claim that it cannot prohibit the use of the D & E abortion method under Stenberg and Taft. Instead, it argues that [a]s demonstrated by the Attorney General's Opinion, the Act must be construed to apply to only the dilation and extraction (D & X) procedure with a life and health exception consistent with Taft in order to give effect to the statute's legislative intent. Appellant's Br. at 11. The state neither concedes that on its face, the statute goes too far by prohibiting pre-viability abortion procedures beyond D & X, nor explicitly argues that the statutory language is constitutional as written. Instead it insists that [a] fair reading of the Michigan statute makes it clear that the [Act] contemplates prohibiting the D & X procedure alone. Appellant's Br. at 23. The gist of this argument would seem to be that the legislature intended to only prohibit D & X, even if it did so somewhat inartfully, and that the statutory language, while inexact, is subject to the narrowing construction expressed in the Attorney General's opinion. The state further argues that the district court failed to adequately consider the applicable rules of statutory construction and the Act's legislative history, and failed to adequately defer to the Michigan Attorney General's view of the law in ruling that it reached beyond the D & X procedure and was therefore unconstitutional. 24 Michigan largely relies on the Supreme Court's decision in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, 546 U.S. 320, 126 S.Ct. 961, 163 L.Ed.2d 812 (2006), in which the Court addressed a New Hampshire law that prohibited a physician from performing an abortion on a minor until 48 hours after written notice of the pending abortion was sent to the minor's parents. Although the statute in Ayotte provided exceptions for instances when the woman's health was at risk, the lower federal courts had determined that the provision was insufficient to adequately address such health concerns, and that the parental notification law should be enjoined entirely. Id. at 325-26, 126 S.Ct. 961. The Supreme Court addressed only the remedy, determining that it was too broad and that only the unconstitutional portions of the statute should have been enjoined. Id. at 326, 126 S.Ct. 961. 25 The Ayotte court addressed three interrelated principles [that] inform our approach to remedies. Id. at 329, 126 S.Ct. 961. First, the Court seeks to avoid nullify[ing] more of a legislature's work than is necessary, because doing so frustrates the intent of the elected representatives of the people. Id. For this reason where partial, rather than facial, invalidation is possible, it is the required course. Id. Second, the Court noted that mindful that our constitutional mandate and institutional competence are limited, we restrain ourselves from rewriting state law to conform it to constitutional requirements even as we strive to salvage it. Id. This consideration counsels in favor of looking to how clearly the court has already articulated the background constitutional rules at issue and how easily we can articulate the remedy. Id. Thus where the Court has established a bright line constitutional rule, it is more appropriate to invalidate parts of the statute that go beyond the constitutional line, whereas making distinctions in a murky constitutional context, or where line-drawing is inherently complex, may call for a `far more serious invasion of the legislative domain' than we ought to undertake. Id. at 330, 126 S.Ct. 961 (quoting United States v. Nat'l Treasury Employees Union, 513 U.S. 454, 479 n. 26, 115 S.Ct. 1003, 130 L.Ed.2d 964 (1995)). Finally, the Court considers legislative intent, and inquires whether the legislature would prefer to have part of the statute remain in force. Id. At the same time, however, the Court is wary of legislatures who would rely on our intervention, because where states merely cast as wide a net as possible and leave it to the courts to determine the permissible extent of a statute's reach, they run the risk of delegating legislative authority to the judiciary. Id. In light of these three considerations, the Ayotte Court remanded the case, ordering that [e]ither an injunction prohibiting unconstitutional applications or a holding that consistency with legislative intent requires invalidating the statute in toto  was the proper result. Id. at 331, 126 S.Ct. 961. 26 At first blush, there could appear to be some degree of tension between the Supreme Court's command in Ayotte that lower federal courts consider partial invalidation of a law's unconstitutional portions before enjoining it in its entirety, and its prior decision in Stenberg, in which it upheld the complete invalidation of Nebraska's statute relating to D & E procedures. The Nebraska statute addressed in Stenberg generally prohibited what it termed partial-birth abortion (with certain health-related exceptions), which it defined as an abortion procedure in which the person performing the abortion partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child and completing the delivery. 530 U.S. at 922, 120 S.Ct. 2597. The statutory definition of partial delivery included delivery into the vagina a living unborn child, or a substantial portion thereof. Id. Much like the Michigan Attorney General argues here, the Nebraska Attorney General sought to have the Court uphold the statute based on his narrowing construction, contending that the statutory language of the Nebraska statute differentiated between D & E and D & X. The Court determined that it had to reject his interpretation, for it conflicts with the statutory language, reasoning that we are `without the power to adopt a narrowing construction of a state statute unless such a construction is reasonable and readily apparent.' 530 U.S. at 942, 944, 120 S.Ct. 2597 (quoting Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 330, 108 S.Ct. 1157, 99 L.Ed.2d 333 (1988)). As the Court noted, D & E will often involve a physician pulling a `substantial portion' of a still living fetus, say an arm or leg, into the vagina prior to the death of the fetus. Id. at 939, 120 S.Ct. 2597. Thus, the Attorney General's claim that the statute only applied to D & X procedures was simply at odds with the plain language of the statute. 27 A closer reading of Ayotte and Stenberg reveals that their remedial approaches are not inconsistent with each other, despite differences between the remedy eventually imposed in each case. First, a substantive distinction between the statutes addressed in the two cases rendered partial invalidation a more natural approach in Ayotte than in Stenberg. The Ayotte Court concluded that in general, New Hampshire's parental notification requirement was constitutional. 546 U.S. at 326, 126 S.Ct. 961. Under the Court's precedent, however, it was undisputed that the law had to have an exception that would allow abortions without consent from a parent or a judge where they were necessary to protect the life and health of the woman, and the Court found New Hampshire's health exception insufficient. Id. at 327-28, 126 S.Ct. 961. Because the unconstitutional portion of the statute (the emergency health exception) was a provision that could be addressed separately from the underlying rule (the parental consent requirement), it was a strong candidate for partial invalidation. In contrast, the underlying rule in Stenberg simply functioned to prohibit D & E procedures. In order to modify this rule to undo the undue burden, a full-blown rewriting of state law would have been required, a course that Ayotte itself cautions against. 28 The Ayotte Court also distinguished Stenberg's remedy by noting that the parties in Stenberg did not ask for, and we did not contemplate, relief more finely drawn. Id. at 331, 126 S.Ct. 961. Interestingly, however, although the parties in Stenberg did not seek severance or partial invalidation, the Nebraska Attorney General did seek to have the Court adopt his narrowing interpretation. The Court expressly declined this request, noting that we are aware that adopting the Attorney General's interpretation might avoid the constitutional problem discussed in this section. But we are `without power to adopt a narrowing construction of a state statute unless such a construction is reasonable and readily apparent.' 530 U.S. at 944, 120 S.Ct. 2597 (quoting Boos, 485 U.S. at 330, 108 S.Ct. 1157). These statements in the two cases indicate that there is a meaningful distinction between partially invalidating or severing a statute (the course preferred under Ayotte ), and adopting a narrowing construction (the course rejected in Stenberg and requested here by the Michigan Attorney General). It may well be that a strained narrowing construction has more potential to amount to judicial rewriting of the statute than does partial invalidation, even though the two appear to be closely related. Although Michigan conflates the two doctrines, we nevertheless agree that if either of these more limited remedies is available, they would be the preferred course. 29 The bottom line is that the limited remedy under either constitutional avoidance or partial invalidation must be consistent with the text of the statute, lest the courts usurp the legislative function. See Ayotte, 546 U.S. at 330, 126 S.Ct. 961 ([I]t would certainly be dangerous if the legislature could set a net large enough to catch all the possible offenders, and leave it to the courts to step inside to announce to whom the statute may be applied.) (quoting United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 221, 23 L.Ed. 563 (1876)). This point was recently reinforced in Gonzales, where the Court deemed applicable the doctrine of constitutional avoidance without disturbing the doctrine's inapplicability with respect to the Nebraska statute addressed in Stenberg. 127 S.Ct. at 1631. The Court specifically put . . . to rest what it described as the antagonistic `cannon of construction under which in cases involving abortion, a permissible reading of a statute [was] to be avoided at all costs.' Id. (quoting Stenberg, 530 U.S. at 977, 120 S.Ct. 2597 (Kennedy, J. dissenting)). Even so, it affirmed Stenberg's uncontroversial proposition that the canon of constitutional avoidance does not apply if a statute is not `genuinely susceptible to two constructions.' Id. (quoting Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 238, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998)). 30 With this background and the preference for a limited remedy in mind, it is apparent that Stenberg largely governs our analysis here, given the striking similarities it shares with this case. Much like the Nebraska statute, the Michigan statute applies as soon as a portion of the fetus passes beyond the vaginal introitus. 4 As the Supreme Court in Stenberg and the district court here both recognized, this necessarily means it applies to D & E procedures. Further, Plaintiffs submitted unrebutted evidence from their declarants that the statute could also apply to the protected suction curretage procedure. Because suction curretage is used more often than D & E, and used earlier in the pregnancy at a time more removed from viability, the potential for a statutory prohibition of some suction curretage procedures would impose even more of an undue burden on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy than a prohibition of D & E. In fact, the one procedure the statute would appear not to apply to is a D & X procedure where the fetus presents itself headfirst, as that is the one instance where its death is brought about (through evacuation of the skull) before any portion of it passes beyond the cervix or vaginal introitus. Thus, just as in Stenberg, the Michigan Attorney General's interpretation of the statute to only apply to D & X procedures and not D & E procedures is entirely at odds with the language of the statute. The statute is not genuinely susceptible to two constructions, and therefore the canon of constitutional avoidance does little to save it. See Gonzales, 127 S.Ct. at 1631. Were we to place our judicial imprimatur on the Attorney General's opinion, we would impermissibly usurp the function of the Michigan legislature. 31 The reasoning set forth in the Michigan Attorney General's opinion actually reinforces our determination that its narrowing construction is at odds with the language of the statute. The opinion states that the D & E procedure requires dismemberment or disarticulation of the fetus and removal of the dead fetus `piece-by-piece' from the woman's uterus—there is no intact extraction of the fetus, and concludes that as a result the fetus would never achieve the status of a perinate under the statute. A.G. Op. at 9. This conclusion is based on either a misunderstanding or an inaccurate description of the D & E procedure. Stenberg and Taft —and the evidence before the district court in this case—make clear that D & E involves and even requires removing a portion of the fetus from the uterus before dismemberment. See Stenberg, 530 U.S. at 939, 120 S.Ct. 2597; Joint App'x at 67 (Hertz Decl.). Under this procedure, the fetus would therefore become a perinate, as part of it will pass the vaginal introitus, and its subsequent demise would subject the physician to criminal liability based on the Michigan statute. As the Court stated in Stenberg, [t]he relevant question is not whether the legislature wanted to ban D & X; it is whether the law was intended to apply only to D & X. The plain language covers both procedures. 530 U.S. at 939, 120 S.Ct. 2597 (emphasis in original). The same reasoning applies here. 32 The Supreme Court's holding in Gonzales is also of little avail to Michigan on this point. Gonzales left undisturbed the holding from Stenberg that a prohibition on D & E amounts to an undue burden on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. 127 S.Ct. at 1626-27. Although the Court upheld the federal ban, it explicitly distinguished it from the Nebraska ban addressed in Stenberg. Most significantly for present purposes, the anatomical landmarks in the federal ban ensured that it did not prohibit standard D & E. The Nebraska statute's reference to a substantial portion of the fetus did not lend itself to a similar limitation. When compared to these other two statutes, the Michigan statute, which applies when any anatomical part of the fetus passes the vaginal introitus, is easily the most sweeping and the most burdensome of the three. That is, whatever substantial part means, it must require the removal of more than any anatomical part, and both clearly fall short of the anatomical landmarks of the federal ban. Because an anatomical part must be removed to conduct a D & E abortion, it is apparent that the Michigan statute would prohibit D & E, and under the framework of Stenberg and Gonzales, impose an unconstitutional undue burden. 33 Additionally, as the plaintiffs point out and the district court found, the statute's plain language would also apply to some suction curretage abortions, medical abortions and induction abortions, because the signs of life identified in the statute, such as a heartbeat, are often present after the fetus or embryo passes beyond the vaginal introitus in such procedures. 384 F.Supp.2d at 985-86. This fact further supports the conclusion that the statute is unconstitutional, particularly because it would prohibit several of the most common pre-viability abortion methods. As Stenberg instructs us, this effect creates an unconstitutional undue burden in violation of Casey. The Act's failure to distinguish between pre- and post-viability abortions only exacerbates this problem. See Stenberg, 530 U.S. at 930, 120 S.Ct. 2597 (The fact that Nebraska's law applies both pre- and post-viability aggravates the constitutional problem presented.). 34 Our decision is also well supported by the Supreme Court's warning to be wary of statutes that set an extremely wide net of prohibited conduct, and leave it to the courts to set the constitutional boundaries. The rationale behind this rule is that such an approach would involve substitut[ing] the judicial for the legislative department of the government. Ayotte, 546 U.S. at 330, 126 S.Ct. 961. This warning is apropos here—the Michigan legislature appears to have cast a wide net that would prohibit virtually all methods of abortions once a fetal heart beat is detectable, including the constitutionally protected D & E procedure, despite knowing that some of these procedures were constitutionally protected, and perhaps with the intention of prohibiting everything the federal courts will allow. A court order prohibiting the statute from applying beyond the D & X procedure would involve the Court too deeply in the legislative process, as warned against in Ayotte. The language the legislature settled upon would in fact allow some D & X procedures while prohibiting most constitutionally protected procedures—an approach that undermines our ability to narrow or partially invalidate the statute to render it constitutional under both Stenberg and Ayotte. Ultimately, because any limitation would be entirely at odds with the language of the statute, such an approach would contravene the holding of Stenberg. 35 In support of its position, Michigan also points to this Court's decision in Taft, which upheld an Ohio statute prohibiting partial birth abortion. A reading of the statute at issue in Taft presents a clear distinction from the Michigan statute. The statute in Taft explicitly stated that [t]his section does not prohibit the suction curretage procedure of abortion, the suction aspiration procedure of abortion, or the dilation and evacuation procedure of abortion.  353 F.3d at 452 (citing Ohio Rev.Code Ann. § 2919.15.1(f)) (emphasis in Taft ). Although the statute did not itself define dilation and evacuation, this Court was not troubled by the omission, as it concluded that the meaning of the term was commonly known. See id. at 452-53. The Michigan statute contains no similar exception or clear definitions that would avoid sweeping up protected abortion procedures within its prohibition, and thus Taft is of no help to the state here. 36 The state also points to the legislative history of the Act to support its claim that it was intended to prohibit only D & X, and not D & E. This argument is flawed at the outset, however, given the unambiguous language of the statute, which applies any time a portion of the fetus passes the vaginal introitus, rendering it unnecessary to rely upon the legislative history here. See Sherwin-Williams Co. v. United States, 403 F.3d 793, 797 (6th Cir.2005) (Because the relevant Code provisions are unambiguous, . . . there is no need to consult legislative history.). Additionally, the substance of the legislative history is actually more ambiguous than the statutory language. In the statements cited by Michigan, most of the state legislators refer to partial-birth abortion without distinguishing between D & X and D & E. See Appellant's Br. at 25-26. In fact, the term could be read to apply to either method, as D & E involves the partial delivery of a portion of the fetus which the physician subsequently pulls on to bring about dismemberment. 5 Although some of the legislators' comments reference the collapse of the fetus's head, which is used in D & X, others use language that refers to both procedures. Id. at 25 (characterizing the bill as granting protection as soon as a single part of the baby's anatomy clears the vaginal opening). The legislative history is of no help to the state, primarily because the text of the statute is unambiguous, but also because the legislative history only creates potential ambiguity. The Supreme Court rejected the legislative history as a source of guidance in Stenberg for similar reasons. 530 U.S. at 943, 120 S.Ct. 2597. 37 The state finally contends that the Attorney General's Opinion should have been granted a greater degree of deference by the district court as a persuasive authority for interpreting Michigan law. This argument is similarly belied by Stenberg. The Court noted that [t]his Court's case law makes clear that we are not to give the Attorney General's interpretative views controlling weight, adding that our precedent warns against accepting as `authoritative' an Attorney General's interpretation of state law when `the Attorney General does not bind the state courts or local law enforcement agencies.' 530 U.S. at 940, 120 S.Ct. 2597. The parties agree that the Michigan Attorney General cannot bind the state's courts. Although the Attorney General argues that he can bind local prosecutors, this would not appear to be sufficient under Stenberg, particularly because, as the plaintiffs point out, an Attorney General's Opinion has no precedential value, and can be revised any time by this or successive Attorneys General. Moreover, as the Stenberg Court noted, even were we to grant the Attorney General's views `substantial weight,' we still have to reject his interpretation, for it conflicts with the statutory language. 530 U.S. at 942, 120 S.Ct. 2597. For the reasons already discussed, the Michigan Attorney General's Opinion also conflicts irreconcilably with the statutory language. Therefore, the district court correctly rejected deferring to the Attorney General's opinion here. 38 Although federal courts are required to seek to uphold the constitutionality of state statutes where possible so as to refrain from interfering with the democratic functioning of a state's representative government, in this case Michigan passed a statute that clearly went beyond the limitations established by the Supreme Court in Stenberg on a nearly identical issue. Further, the statute was passed after this Court's decision in Taft, which upheld a significantly narrower Ohio statute in a decision that outlined at length the limitations on a state's ability to regulate abortion procedures under Stenberg. See 353 F.3d at 443-53. Michigan therefore had significant guidance in implementing a statute that would ban only the D & X procedure—the goal that the state now contends it was attempting to achieve—but instead passed a very broadly-worded statute that showed no meaningful attempt to comply with the constitutional limitations articulated by federal courts in the area of abortion law. We are not in a position to rectify this dragnet approach to legislation, and must affirm the district court's invalidation of the statute based on the undue burden imposed by its general prohibition of many constitutionally protected abortion procedures. 39 The district court's decision that Michigan's broad abortion statute created an unconstitutional undue burden on a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy because it prohibits D & E was in full accordance with the Supreme Court's guidance in both Stenberg and Ayotte, and has in no way been undermined by the interim decision in Gonzales. It is therefore affirmed.
40 The life and health exceptions in the Michigan statute provide as follows: 41 (2) A physician or an individual performing an act, task, or function under the delegatory authority of a physician is immune from criminal, civil, or administrative liability for performing any procedure that results in injury or death of a perinate while completing the delivery of the perinate under any of the following circumstances: 42 (a) If the perinate is being expelled from the mother's body as a result of a spontaneous abortion. 43 (b) If in that physician's reasonable medical judgment and in compliance with the applicable standard of practice and care, the procedure was necessary in either of the following circumstances: 44 (i) To save the life of the mother and every reasonable effort was made to preserve the life of both the mother and the perinate. 45 (ii) To avert an imminent threat to the physical health of the mother, and any harm to the perinate was incidental to treating the mother and not a known or intended result of the procedure performed. 46 Mich. Comp. Laws § 333.1083. The district court found the health exception in part (2)(b)(ii) of the statute inadequate because in every abortion, the physician knows the outcome of the procedure to be the demise of the perinate. 384 F.Supp.2d at 987. Thus, the district court concluded that the exception is essentially inoperative on its own terms, as it would prohibit every D & E and D & X procedure used to protect the health of the woman, in contravention of the holding in Stenberg. Similarly, with regard to the life exception in part (2)(b)(i), the provision that every reasonable effort must be made to save the life of the perinate requires the physician to balance the life of the woman with that of the perinate. The Supreme Court has found life exceptions to be inadequate where they require the mother to bear an increased medical risk in order to save her viable fetus. Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 769, 106 S.Ct. 2169, 90 L.Ed.2d 779 (1986). Because the life exception here does just that, the district court also found it to be unconstitutional. 384 F.Supp.2d at 987-88. 47 As discussed above in Part II of this opinion, the Supreme Court's holding in Stenberg pertaining to the need for a health exception to otherwise valid D & X prohibitions was modified somewhat in Gonzales. It is not immediately apparent how this decision should affect Michigan's statute. On the one hand, Gonzales's holding that an exception allowing D & X might not always be medically necessary was premised on a conflicted factual record, and doubts about the medical need for such an exception would appear to apply with equal force in this case. On the other hand, the factual findings that cast doubt on the safety implications of D & X were not part of the record in this case, were not a basis for the passage of the Michigan statute, and were made by the legislative body of an entirely separate sovereign, suggesting the possibility that they could be of diminished relevance here. 48 The most straightforward implication of Gonzales in this context might be its statement that facial challenges are not the preferred mechanism for challenges pertaining to health exceptions to prohibitions on the D & X procedure, suggesting that such a challenge should not be entertained here. Even so, it is not apparent how and whether Gonzales diminishes the rule requiring an exception to protect the woman's life that does not impose upon her an increased medical risk. See Thornburgh, 476 U.S. at 769, 106 S.Ct. 2169 (prohibiting a `trade-off' between the woman's health and additional percentage points of fetal survival.') (citing Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 397-401, 99 S.Ct. 675, 58 L.Ed.2d 596 (1979)). The federal statute contains an apparently adequate life exception that allows D & X where necessary to save the life of the woman, which went unchallenged in Gonzales. See 18 U.S.C. § 1531(a) (This subsection does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother . . .). This suggests that the Supreme Court's precedent pertaining to the life exception remains unchanged. 49 For purposes of resolving the instant case, we can affirm the district court's decision without addressing the complicated implications of Gonzales for the life and health exceptions of the Michigan statute. The bottom line is that the life and health exceptions are exceptions to an unconstitutional and un-fixable general prohibition on certain abortion procedures. That is to say it is unnecessary for us to address exceptions to an unconstitutional and unenforceable general rule. Because we find the general prohibition to be unconstitutional, and we are unable and unsuited to rewriting a prohibition on the D & X procedure alone, there is little to gain by an attempt to resolve this issue.
50 The district court further concluded that the Act was void for vagueness due to its confusing and ambiguous nature. The district court specifically noted that the Act does not specify what medical procedures are banned and does not set forth specific penalties for violation of its terms. 394 F.Supp.2d at 989. It also found that the term `perinate' is not a commonly used definition within the medical community, and further based its vagueness determination on the failure to define the terms imminent threat and every reasonable effort. Id. 51 A statute is void for vagueness where it fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute, or is so indefinite that it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 390, 99 S.Ct. 675, 58 L.Ed.2d 596 (1979). Due process provides heightened protection against vague statutes where the uncertainty induced by the statute threatens to inhibit the exercise of constitutionally protected rights. Id. 52 We believe that the void for vagueness challenge presents a closer question than the undue burden challenges under Stenberg discussed above. It would in some ways seem that Plaintiffs' argument that the statutory language is clearly unconstitutional and that the Attorney General's Opinion cannot be read as a reasonable interpretation cuts against their void for vagueness argument. It does appear that some of the terms in the health and life exceptions are poorly defined, and would fail to notify physicians of exactly when these exceptions would apply, although these shortcomings do not bear upon the separate question of whether the general, prohibited conduct is vague, aside from the exceptions. At any rate, in light of our decision to affirm the district court's decision under Stenberg, we decline to reach the separate void for vagueness claim.