Attorneys for two Arkansas doctors who successfully challenged a state law restricting abortions past 12 weeks of pregnancy if a fetal heartbeat is detected were awarded $27,060 in attorneys' fees, $76.30 in costs and $1,375.75 in expenses Wednesday in connection with the state's appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The St. Louis-based appeals court issued a one-sentence order that didn't include reasons for those amounts.
On June 9, the attorneys requested $48,555 in attorneys' fees and $2,442.44 in expenses, which the attorney general's office labeled "excessive" in a June 16 response. Assistant Attorney General Colin Jorgensen argued that the plaintiffs used an "unnecessarily excessive and duplicative" number of attorneys and asserted that the plaintiffs should be able to recover $26,610 in attorneys' fees and $1,375.75 for expenses. He didn't mention costs.
In May, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit upheld U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright's order finding that the part of the law that limited abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy contradicted decades of U.S. Supreme Court rulings on when a fetus is viable, or capable of living independently outside the womb. Until the 2013 law was passed, Arkansas considered viability as beginning at 25 weeks of pregnancy. The law approved by legislators in 2013 was called the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act.
On June 10, the state sought a re-hearing of the appeal by the full appeals court. As of Wednesday, the court hadn't indicated whether it will grant the request.
Metro on 07/09/2015