A recent Wyoming Supreme Court ruling demonstrates how unique state constitutional provisions can be used to combat Christian nationalism.

In the case, abortion advocates successfully argued that state laws enacted a few years ago criminalizing abortion and banning the prescription and use of abortion medication were unconstitutional under the right to make health care decisions enshrined in the Wyoming Constitution in 2012. The amendment, similar to amendments in four other states, was originally pushed as a way to prevent residents from being compelled to participate in the Affordable Care Act. Wyoming’s amendment was unique in that it also included language about health care decisions more generally: “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”

In its ruling, the Wyoming Supreme Court first answered the question of whether abortion is health care with a resounding yes: “As a medical means to address the adverse effects of pregnancy and ‘restore’ a woman to a ‘condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; [especially]: freedom from physical disease or pain,’ abortion is ‘health care,’ in accordance with the plain meaning of that phrase.” Therefore, it concluded, the decision of whether to continue a pregnancy or seek abortion care is a health care decision.

The state of Wyoming attempted to argue that the decision to seek abortion care was not a person’s “own” decision because it affects the life of a fetus. The Wyoming Supreme Court characterized this argument as conflating two different questions — whether the decision was a person’s own and “whether and to what extent that decision may be restricted by the state given it ends the fetal life.”

First, the court said, the decision to have an abortion was obviously a person’s own decision. To answer the second question, the Wyoming Supreme Court determined that because the right to health care decisions is explicit in the Constitution, it is a fundamental right. That, the court said, combined with the fact that the amendment’s own language makes clear that the government may only restrict that right in extreme cases, demonstrates that any laws affecting the right to health care decisions should be subject to strict scrutiny.

“Strict scrutiny” is the most difficult legal test that a law has to pass for it to be upheld. Under strict scrutiny, a law that impacts a fundamental right must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. If a law infringes on a fundamental right and fails strict scrutiny, it will be declared unconstitutional.

Finally, the Wyoming Supreme Court determined that even if the state had a compelling interest in “protecting life from the time of conception,” which the state did not effectively argue and thus was not actually decided, the state had not met its burden of showing that the law was narrowly tailored to serve that interest. The court pointed to the statutes’ arbitrary definitions of “lethal fetal anatomy,” concerns about the exclusion of mental health conditions from consideration when determining the risk to the mother’s life, and the reporting requirements for the exception for rape and incest as evidence that the laws were not narrowly tailored and therefore were unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court’s ruling may not stand for very long. Most likely, Wyoming’s overwhelmingly Republican Legislature will propose an abortion ban constitutional amendment to the state’s voters in response to this ruling, perhaps as soon as the coming November. It could be a close call on election night. A survey in 2024 showed that 39 percent of Wyoming residents believed abortion should always be permitted, with an additional 20 percent who believed abortion “should be permitted in situations beyond rape, incest and danger to the mother, provided the need has been clearly established.” The Legislature has already responded to this Wyoming Supreme Court decision by discussing shrinking the court from five justices to three.

No matter the ultimate response in Wyoming, this win is an exciting one for reproductive rights advocates and for advocates on other progressive issues who are also trying to push back against the Christian nationalist agenda. For example, Ohio advocates are using a similar argument in a case pending before the Ohio Supreme Court regarding whether a law banning gender-affirming care for trans minors violates Ohio’s health care decision amendment. The Wyoming Supreme Court’s decision signals that this argument is a strong one.

While Christian nationalists continue to focus on getting abortion bans on the books in as many states as possible, Wyoming’s Constitution provides a blueprint for a new way to fight back.