Nevada's long-dormant law requiring minors to give parental notification before undergoing an abortion will go into effect at the end of the month, after a federal judge lifted an injunction that prevented the law from ever being enforced.

U.S. District Court Judge Anne Traum ruled that the new policy will take effect April 30.

Nevada has had a law since 1985 requiring parental notification — or judicial bypass of the notification requirement — for physicians to perform abortions on minors. But the law has never been enforced because federal courts enjoined it before it took effect. Planned Parenthood of Washoe County sued to stop the law, saying it was not compliant with Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing the federal right to an abortion. 

In 1985, the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada granted a preliminary injunction against the law’s enforcement — which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, made permanent in 1991 and has been in place ever since. 

But when Roe was overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association, a group of Nevada district attorneys argued that the injunction should be lifted. District attorneys from Carson City, Storey and Douglas counties, among others, filed a lawsuit in December 2023 requesting relief from the injunction.

Initially, the district court said that both parties needed to address arguments that would propose maintaining the injunction on “alternative constitutional grounds.” But on Monday, the district court ruled in the district attorneys’ favor, saying that the Dobbs decision means the injunction is no longer legally sound.

Traum was appointed to the court by President Joe Biden. In her decision, she wrote that the case was not about the merits of the injunction barring parental notification — only whether it’s still legal.

“Defendants do not need to show that the decision in Dobbs has made the injunction more onerous, unworkable, or detrimental to the public interest,” Traum wrote. “Defendants must only show that continued enforcement would be inequitable because a change in law has eliminated the basis for the [injunction].”

If the defendants appeal, the case would go to the 9th Circuit Appellate Court in San Francisco. Neither Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office nor lawyers for Planned Parenthood immediately returned requests for comment.

James Bopp, a conservative lawyer representing the district attorneys, said in an interview that because the injunction applied indefinitely into the future, it was worthwhile to pursue the case.

“We thought it was really important that this law protecting minors, who are too immature to make their own decision regarding abortion, would obtain parental involvement in that decision,” Bopp said. “That protects minors, and it protects the rights of parents to raise their children, so there are very important interests at stake.”

Currently, 36 states require some form of parental notification for a physician to perform an abortion on a minor. Nevada’s statute only requires notification — 27 states take the additional step of requiring parental consent as well.