State to pay abortion-suit fees

U.S. judge awards LR doctors $69,025 in 12-week ban case

A federal judge ordered the state on Monday to pay most of the legal fees and related costs for two Little Rock doctors who successfully challenged part of a 2013 state law that restricted abortions.

In the order, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright awarded $65,580 in attorneys' fees and $3,445.50 in costs. The plaintiffs had sought $76,560 in attorneys' fees, which the state objected to on the grounds that the plaintiffs prevailed on only one part of their lawsuit. The state didn't object to the costs request.

On March 14, Wright permanently struck down as unconstitutional the provision in Act 301 that prohibited most women from receiving an abortion in Arkansas once they had reached 12 weeks of pregnancy, if a fetal heartbeat was detected. But she kept intact parts of the law that require a woman to undergo an abdominal ultrasound before an abortion and that order doctors to notify the woman and estimate the fetus's chances of being brought to term, if they detect a fetal heartbeat.

Wright's order said there is "no question" that the plaintiffs, Drs. Jerry Louis Edwards and Tom Tvedten, backed by the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights and the Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, are the prevailing parties in the case. However, she reduced the fee request by $10,980 -- the amount sought on behalf of two out-of-state attorneys who traveled from New York to attend a hearing in Little Rock on a request for a preliminary injunction. She said the issues in that hearing "were straight-forward and concerned well-settled law" and were ably handled by local attorneys Bettina Brownstein and Holly Dickson.

Wright said the plaintiffs had already deducted time spent on the issue of severability -- whether she could sever the 12-week ban from the other parts of the law -- before submitting their fee request.

Metro on 06/11/2014

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