O'Melveny's 2018-2019 Pro Bono Review

O’MELVENY PRO BONO PROGRAM REVIEW 2018- 2019 13 In October 2018, the Circuit Court adopted many of O’Melveny’s arguments and reduced the remittitur to $65,325, a fraction of the almost half a million dollar judgment against the client that stood when O’Melveny entered the case. STANDING UP FOR WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS Defending Abortion Rights in Kentucky O’Melveny was co-counsel with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project in striking down a Kentucky statute that would have outlawed the only second-trimester abortion procedure used in the Commonwealth. Representing EMW Women’s Surgical Center (the only remaining abortion provider in the Commonwealth of Kentucky), O’Melveny served as co-lead trial counsel during a one-week bench trial in Louisville, in 2018, during which US District Judge Joseph H. McKinley heard testimony from nearly a dozen experts. Six months later, Judge McKinley struck down the challenged law as unconstitutional, finding that it forced Kentucky women to endure what the judge characterized as “a medically unnecessary and invasive procedure that may increase the duration of an otherwise one- day standard D&E abortion.” In his ruling, the judge wrote that the O’Melveny and ACLU team had “successfully showed [that] the Act will operate as a substantial obstacle to a woman’s right to an abortion before the fetus reached viability—a violation of a woman’s Fourteenth Amendment rights to privacy and bodily integrity.” This win has proved to be an important and influential victory in the fight for reproductive rights. Saving second-trimester abortion in Kentucky, a bellwether state, will affect the lives of thousands of woman around the nation. Defending Abortion Rights in Indiana At the request of Planned Parenthood, O’Melveny wrote an amicus brief challenging an Indiana law that restricted abortion rights. The law would bar a woman from having an abortion if she had decided to end her pregnancy because of a concern that the fetus had a disability, or because of its gender, race, or ancestry. The law also mandated that embryonic and fetal tissue from an abortion or miscarriage be cremated or buried. In June 2016, the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana agreed with the arguments of the O’Melveny team and blocked the law’s challenged provisions, citing Roe v. Wade , which forbids a state from banning abortion before fetal viability. The court also held that there was no rational basis for the state to require that the tissues be disposed of in one way or another. The Seventh Circuit later affirmed the district court’s decision, and in October 2018, the State of Indiana requested that the US Supreme Court review the decision. The ACLU and Planned Parenthood, which requested that O’Melveny write an amicus on behalf of a distinguished group of ethicists, opposed that request. In its brief, O’Melveny argued that the Indiana law violated long-established principles of medical ethics, including patient autonomy, and unlawfully intrudes on the physician-patient relationship. O’Melveny was co-counsel with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project in striking down two Kentucky laws that would have outlawed the only second-trimester abortion procedure used in the Commonwealth.