Court Cases

After voters passed Proposal 3 in 2022, enshrining the fundamental right to reproductive freedom in the Michigan Constitution, the state legislature repealed some anti-abortion laws but left others in place. Among the laws that legislators failed to repeal is a 1980s-era ban on the use of state funds for abortion. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Michiganders with Medicaid insurance are unable to use their insurance to cover the cost of an abortion or any related care. The Medicaid ban creates a two-tiered system: people with higher incomes and private insurance are able to use their plans to cover the cost of an abortion, while Medicaid-eligible patients—who by definition are lower-income—are forced to come up with the funds themselves, which they may not have. The law also puts lower-income patients in harm’s way, delaying or denying their access to care and in some cases forcing them to carry a pregnancy to term. In June 2024 the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s ban on Medicaid coverage for abortion care on behalf of YWCA Kalamazoo, an organization that operates a fund to help people pay for abortion care. We are arguing that the ban is unconstitutional under Michigan’s new constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to reproductive freedom. Even though the government did not initially challenge YWCA Kalamazoo’s standing to bring this lawsuit, the trial court raised the issue itself and then dismissed the lawsuit in July 2025 without addressing the merits of our claims. The court held that YWCA Kalamazoo was not sufficiently interested in the constitutionality of Michigan’s Medicaid Ban to be the plaintiff in this lawsuit. We appealed that same month and filed our opening brief in October 2025. (YWCA Kalamazoo v. State of Michigan; ACLU of Michigan Attorneys Bonsitu Kitaba-Gaviglio, Phil Mayor, and Dan Korobkin; National ACLU Attorneys Brigitte Amiri and Ryan Mendias; Cooperating Attorneys Katherine Cheng, Jessica Huang, Jenna Welsh, Jennifer Briggs Fisher and Jamie Santos of Goodwin Procter.)