15 Cities and Counties Send Letter Urging Federal Law Enforcement Agencies to Issue Guidance Restricting Federal Cooperation With State-Level Abortion Bans
Public Rights Project, alongside government leaders from cities and counties across the U.S., send letter to Attorney General Garland and Secretaries Mayorkas and Buttigieg—urging them to take immediate steps to ensure that their departments do not play any role in the enforcement of state bans on abortion care.
July 28, 2022
The Honorable Merrick B. Garland
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530
The Honorable Alejandro N. Mayorkas
Secretary of Homeland Security
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
301 7th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20528
The Honorable Pete Buttigieg
Secretary of Transportation
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
Re: Request for Federal Law Enforcement Guidance Prohibiting Federal Cooperation with State-Level Abortion Bans
Dear Attorney General Garland and Secretaries Mayorkas and Buttigieg:
We the undersigned cities and counties, write you with great urgency to ask that your agencies take immediate steps to ensure that your Departments and their subcomponents do not play any role — directly or indirectly — in the enforcement of state bans on accessing or providing abortion care and travel to seek it. To our knowledge, your agencies have not issued public guidance regarding federal cooperation with or participation in state- or locally-led investigations and prosecutions of activities that may violate state abortion restrictions. We write as local jurisdictions participating in many federal-state-local law enforcement partnerships to request you issue such guidance to your enforcement officers. We believe that clear instructions are needed immediately and must, among other things: (1) describe your officers’ role(s) in actively ensuring that reproductive rights are protected; and (2) instruct that none of your officers or employees will participate in the criminalization of abortion or enforcement of state restrictions upon it.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s monumental decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022), restrictive abortion laws have (or shortly will) come into effect in nearly half the states. (1) Some of these laws ban all abortions, even in cases where the pregnant person’s life is at risk, penalizing the pregnant person and the medical provider. (2) Others seek to penalize people traveling across state lines for abortion-related medical care and those who aid such travel.
The Dobbs decision has led many states and localities to take action to ensure that their constituents maintain access to reproductive care. (3) Some states, including California, Connecticut, Colorado, New York, and Washington, have passed laws or issued executive orders to restrict the sharing or provision of information or the extradition of persons in connection with an abortion prosecution. (4) Many of our jurisdictions have taken similar definitive actions to support access to care.
Among others, the cities of Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, and Pittsburgh passed ordinances to deprioritize the use of police resources in the investigation of abortion-related crimes while New York City is prohibiting the use of all city resources to enforce abortion-related crimes. (5) Some are also developing or expanding abortion funds, eliminating co-pays for abortion services, disseminating public health information, and making public hospitals available to non-residents for reproductive care. Such cities are doing their part and will continue to look for opportunities to support access to crucial, and sometimes lifesaving, care for pregnant people.
Our actions, however, are only one part of this critical work: your departments have a vital role to play. Among other things, your departments have enforcement units that often work collaboratively with state and local law enforcement. You, individually and/or collectively, help govern air travel and entry and exit to localities, states, and the country; have policing agreements with local and state enforcement departments; have data and information sharing agreements with states and localities; cross-deputize local agents to assist with federal law enforcement; enforce or assist in the enforcement of state and local warrants; and otherwise play important roles in protecting freedom of movement between states.
These cooperative agreements, working groups, task forces, and other endeavors are vital to maintain public safety within and between the states. However, many of these cooperative activities are discretionary, and you have considerable leeway in how you deploy these assets. Nonetheless, to date, no federal law enforcement agency has issued public-facing guidance detailing how you will protect people traveling to, within, and from our jurisdictions for reproductive care. (6)
We request that you issue directives making clear that your departments and subcomponents will not participate in investigations or other law enforcement activities relating to the criminalization of abortion care. More specifically, we request that this guidance:
- Require that your agents ascertain whether an information or other assistance request from a state or local actor relates to the criminalization of abortion care before offering any information or assistance available to that actor, and subsequently denying that aid request if it does;
- Restrict information sharing, access, surveillance, detention, examination, and any other steps that might aid or assist a state or local actor in identifying or pursuing a potential witness or suspect relating to the criminalization of abortion;
- Direct the Civil Rights component of your respective agencies to identify and review different information sharing activities that represent risks to reproductive autonomy; and
- Revise any memoranda of understanding or other legal agreements between federal law enforcement and state and/or local actors as required to implement the above directives.
We also understand these requests are consistent with and, in fact, in furtherance of President Biden’s July 8, 2022 Executive Order. (7) The E.O. specifically requires the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to “consider actions, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure the safety of patients, providers, and third parties, and to protect the security of clinics (including mobile clinics), pharmacies, and other entities providing, dispensing, or delivering reproductive and related healthcare services.” (8)
Community trust is essential for law enforcement to work effectively. Taking clear and definitive action against the criminalization of abortion is crucial to rebuilding trust that eroded during the prior administration. We hope that you will seriously consider this request and take clear action with much haste. Access to abortion care is urgently needed throughout the country, and your departments are essential to protecting the rights that the U.S. Supreme Court has sought to eliminate.
Should we be of any further assistance, please feel free to contact the staff of Public Rights Project, listed below on behalf of our coalition.
Sincerely,
Jonathan B. Miller
Chief Program Officer
Michael Adame
Staff Attorney
Elsa Haag
Legal Fellow
PUBLIC RIGHTS PROJECT
4096 Piedmont Avenue, #149
Oakland, CA 94611
jon@publicrightsproject.org
michael@publicrightsproject.org
elsa@publicrightsproject.org
Cc: Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,
U.S. Department of Justice
Katherine Culliton González, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,
Department of Homeland Security
Irene Marion, Director, Departmental Office of Civil Rights,
Department of Transportation
On behalf of :
LAUREN KEEFE
City Attorney
One Civic Plaza, 4th Floor
Albuquerque, NM 87102
Attorney for the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico
JAMES L. SHEA
City Solicitor
100 North Holliday Street, Suite 101
Baltimore, MD 21202
Attorney for the City of Baltimore, Maryland
CHERYL WATSON FISHER
City Solicitor
500 Broadway, Room 307
Chelsea, MA 02150
Attorney for the City of Chelsea, Massachusetts
CELIA MEZA
Corporation Counsel
121 North LaSalle Street, Room 600
Chicago, IL 60602
Attorney for the City of Chicago, Illinois
ANDREW W. GARTH
City Solicitor
801 Plum Street, Room 214
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Attorney for the City of Cincinnati, Ohio
ZACH KLEIN
City Attorney
77 North Front Street
4th Floor Columbus, OH 43215
Attorney for the City of Columbus, Ohio
MICHAEL HAAS
City Attorney
210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Room 401
Madison, WI 53703
Attorney for the City of Madison, Wisconsin
MARGARET C. DAUN
Corporation Counsel
901 North 9th Street, Room 303
Milwaukee, WI 53233
Attorney for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
HON. SYLVIA O. HINDS-RADIX
Corporation Counsel of the City of New York
100 Church Street
New York, NY 10007
Attorney for the City of New York, New York
BARBARA J. PARKER
City Attorney
One Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, 6th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Attorney for the City of Oakland, California
KRYSIA KUBIAK
City Solicitor and Chief Legal Officer
414 Grant Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Attorney for the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
ROBERT TAYLOR
City Attorney
1221 SW Fourth Avenue, Room 430
Portland, OR 97204
Attorney for the City of Portland, Oregon
SUSANA ALCALA WOOD
City Attorney
915 I Street, Fourth Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814
Attorney for City of Sacramento, California
LYNDSEY M. OLSON
City Attorney
400 City Hall & Court House
15 West Kellogg Boulevard
Saint Paul, MN 55102
Attorney for the City of Saint Paul, Minnesota
DAVID CHIU
City Attorney
City Hall Room 234
One Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102
Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco, California
(1) Interactive Map: US Abortion Policies and Access After Roe, Guttmacher Inst., (updated July 22, 2022), https://states.guttmacher.org/policies/.
(2) Elyssa Spitzer, Some States Are Ready To Punish Abortion in a Post-Roe World, Cent. for Am. Progress, (June 24, 2022), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/some-states-are-ready-to-punish-abortion-in-a-post-roe-world/
(“Three states have statutes that do not include exceptions to save a patient’s life. Eighteen of the laws (from 15 states) do not allow for abortion in cases of rape, while 20 of the laws (from 16 states) do not allow for abortion in
cases of incest. Moreover, nine states have statutes that, though not explicitly authorizing prosecution of a person seeking care, also do not explicitly preclude such prosecutions in the same manner other states do.”).
(3) Guttmacher Inst., supra note 1.
(4) Off. of Governor Gavin Newsom, Exec. Order N-12–22 (June 27, 2022), https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/
uploads/2022/06/6.27.22-EO-N-12–22-Reproductive-Freedom.pdf; Conn. Gen. Assemb., Public Act №22–19 (May 5, 2022), https://cga.ct.gov/2022/ACT/PA/PDF/2022PA-00019-R00HB-05414-PA.PDF; Off. of Governor Jared Polis, Exec. Order D 2022 032 (July 6, 2022), https://drive.google.com/file/d/10zvLU35d47Y9DYmG0vFZ
zI7tJAlACXYg/view; N.Y. Gen. Assemb., S. B. 9077A (May 6, 2022), https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/
2021/S9077A; Off. of Governor Jay Inslee, Directive of the Governor 22–12 (June 30, 2022), https://www.governor.
wa.gov/sites/default/files/directive/22–12%20%20Prohibiting%20assistance%20with%20interstate%
20abortion%20investigations%20(tmp).pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery.
(5) Austin, Tex. City Council, Res. 20220721–002, (July 21, 2022), https://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.
cfm?id=387204; Atlanta, Ga. City Council, Res. 22-R-3711 (June 21, 2022), https://aimewebapp.blob.core.
windows.net/finalactions/22r3711.pdf; Nashville, Tenn. Metropolitan Council, Res. RS2022–1635 (July 5, 2022), https://nashville.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Master&GID=787&ID=5711955&GUID=FFA95C79-0930-48CB-AA94-54E000CAFF18&Extra=WithText&Title=Legislation+Details+(With+Text); Pittsburgh, Pa. City Council, 2022–0523, (July 19, 2022), https://pittsburgh.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=5709517&
GUID=12B1D75D-3C16–44B3-A23F-5224166C2BBD&Options=ID%7cText%7c&&FullText=1 (awaiting Mayor signature); Council Votes on Historic Abortion and Reproductive Health Care Rights Legislative Package, N.Y. City Council, (July 14, 2022), https://council.nyc.gov/press/2022/07/14/2222/.
(6) Off. of Governor Jay Inslee, West Coast States Launch New Multi-State Commitment to Reproductive Freedom, Standing United on Protecting Abortion Access in face of U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Roe vs. Wade (June 24, 2022), https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/west-coast-states-launch-new-multi-state-commitment- reproductive-freedom-standing-united.
(7) Exec. Order №14076, 87 Fed. Reg. 42,053 (July 8, 2022), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-07-
13/pdf/2022–15138.pdf.8 Id. at 42,054.
(8) Id. at 42,054.
