Taxpayers Could Pay the Bill for Abortion Ban Fight, Even if State Gets Pro-Bono Legal Team

Oct 06, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News) Without an agreement to cover the state's legal fees, even Representative Carl Wimmer admits an abortion ban he'll sponsor next session is doomed to fail.

"Well let's put it this way, I don't think we can get the bill passed in a time where we are seeing budget cuts," he says. "I don't' think we can get the bill passed unless we have a provision in there that says it will be funded from an outside source."

However, Wimmer says a contract won't be necessary to protect taxpayers from footing the bill to fight challenges to the law. Wimmer also says a Washington DC organization has agreed to fight the case pro-bono. However, Walter Weber with DC-based-American Center for Law and Justice says consulting is a more typical arrangement. And he says even consulting is usually formalized in a contract.

Weber says he's unaware of any agreement with Utah. But if the ACLJ took the case, he says taxpayers could still be on the hook for legal fees. The law allows those who successfully challenge a state statute to have their legal fees covered by the state.

"Typically, in a case where there's a challenge to an abortion law, if the challenge prevails, they invoke a federal statute, which provides for attorneys fees in certain cases," Weber says. "It's that statute that normally provides the vehicle for an attorney representing, say Planned Parenthood or ACLU to get fees from a city or a state that had a law restricting abortion."

And if such a challenge went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the bill could be sizable. An abortion ban passed in 1991 eventually cost Utah taxpayers $1 million.

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