The Montana Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a preliminary injunction against three state laws regulating abortion, temporarily blocking an attempt to enforce abortion prohibitions while the laws are challenged in the courts.

Abortion provider Planned Parenthood applied for a preliminary injunction against the immediate enforcement 0f three laws passed by the Montana state legislature: HB 136 banning abortions after twenty weeks from a patient’s last menstrual period, HB 171 banning tele-health services for abortion care, and HB 140 requiring abortion providers to play the fetal heartbeat or show an ultrasound to patients before performing an abortion. All three laws were passed in 2021.

Justice Beth Baker of the Montana Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Yellowstone County District Court, which enjoined the three laws and granted a preliminary injunction as a violation of the state’s right to privacy.

The synopsis of the Supreme Court’s opinion read that “abortion service providers and their patients would suffer great or irreparable injury if the laws were not enjoined.” The court applied the 1999 Montana case Armstrong v State of Montana and found that it “held that laws interfering with procreative and bodily autonomy are reviewed under a standard of strict scrutiny.” The Armstrong case established a right to privacy in the Montana Constitution, which the court cited in its opinion as “more robust” than the federal undue burden standard in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, now overruled by the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision.

The court denied a motion to file an amicus curiae brief sought by Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, who argued for Armstrong v. State to be overturned. In its denial, the court said:

“The Court recognizes the potential implications of the Dobbs decision and the desire to afford full opportunity to be heard… [but] the appeal of this preliminary injunction is not the time for those arguments to be made and considered.”

The court sent the appeal for a preliminary injunction back to the district court, where state laws against abortion may still go into effect pending a full trial.