In a defeat for Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, a three-judge panel ruled against the state’s effort to end a longstanding lawsuit challenging the vagueness and inadequacy of exceptions to Tennessee’s near-total abortion ban.
Attorneys for the state asked for a ruling in their favor, without a trial, in a lawsuit brought by a group of Tennessee OB-GYNs and women who had suffered serious medical problems during their pregnancies. The American Medical Association subsequently joined the lawsuit.
State attorneys had argued that a 2025 amendment adding “medical necessity exceptions” to Tennessee’s 2022 abortion ban made the lawsuit moot.
But the Chancery Court panel disagreed, signaling skepticism that exceptions to the state’s abortion ban were adequate to protect the lives and health of pregnant women in Tennessee.
The plaintiffs, the judges wrote, “have sufficiently alleged that the defects in the Medical Necessity Exception place their lives at risk in violation of their constitutional right to life.”