CASPER — A Natrona County judge on Tuesday denied an effort by abortion-rights plaintiffs to add Wyoming’s new Human Heartbeat Act to an already pending abortion lawsuit, ruling the proposed new claims are too different from the issues already before the court and would slow the case down.
In a March 31 order, retired District Judge Thomas T.C. Campbell denied the plaintiffs’ WRCP 15(d) motion for leave to file supplemental and amended claims in Danielle Johnson, et al. v. State of Wyoming, et al., Civil Action No. 2025-CV-0115019. The plaintiffs had sought to add a challenge to House Bill 126, the Human Heartbeat Act, which became law March 9.
HB0126 effectively bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected; this, on the heels of several different actions of the legislature to ban abortion in the cowboy state.
The first major abortion prohibition was 2022’s HB0092--known as the “Trigger Bill.” The innovative approach banned the premature ending of a pregnancy, with only a few exceptions, in the event Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the time of the bill’s passage, its sponsor, Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, told Cowboy State Politics that when the bill was being crafted she never thought that the 14th Amendment protections for abortion would be overturned so quickly.
A few short months later, in July of that year, the law was challenged, and an injunction issued the following August. During the next legislative session, a broader abortion ban, the Life is a Human Right Act, was passed and signed by Governor Gordon. This too was immediately challenged by Wellspring Health Access, Wyoming’s only abortion clinic, and others.
That same year, Senator Tim Salazar’s bill, SF0109 Prohibiting Chemical Abortions, was passed. As the title suggests, this bill banned the use of mifepristone and other abortion drugs in Wyoming. Much like the other attempts, this law was quickly challenged and rolled into the same lawsuit as the previous two bans.
In March of 2024, Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens, in whose court the bans were pending, asked the Wyoming Supreme Court to weigh in on whether abortion is health care under Wyoming law. Nowhere in Wyoming Statute is there a single reference to abortion being healthcare.
Owens ruled that November that abortion is healthcare, striking down all three laws. That case was appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court which affirmed, in January of 2026, that abortion is covered by Article 1, section 38 of the Wyoming Constitution. Interestingly, the court ignored section (c.) of the healthcare provision granting the legislature the right to pass reasonable restrictions to the right of healthcare access.
In the 2025 session, the legislature passed HB0064 which created an ultrasound requirement before abortion drugs could be administered as well as HB0042 which further regulated abortion clinics. The latter mandated that abortion surgical facilities be licensed the same as ambulatory surgical centers. The bill also stipulated clinics to be staffed by physicians with admitting privileges at a hospital not less than 10 miles from the clinic.
As before, the 2025 laws were immediately challenged in court. While there was a bit of judicial badminton between Owens’s Teton County court and Natrona County, the case was eventually transferred to Natrona County where retired Judge Campbell issued an injunction in April of 2025. It is these last two cases that Wellspring and other plaintiffs sought to roll its challenge to the “Heartbeat Bill” into.
Procedural ruling, not a merits ruling
Campbell made clear the dispute before him was procedural. He did not rule on whether the heartbeat law is constitutional. Instead, he found that adding the new law to the current case would inject factual issues that are “inherently different” from the claims already being litigated and would require reopening deadlines and discovery. The existing lawsuit, the court said, is already positioned for resolution through summary judgment or trial. Reworking that schedule now would delay finality and prejudice the defendants.
The plaintiffs argued supplementation would serve judicial economy, but the court was not persuaded. Campbell wrote that while all of the challenged laws involve abortion regulation in Wyoming, the similarities are only superficial. He said the laws currently at issue regulate abortion medications and providers, while House Bill 42 functions as a substantial abortion ban, making the state’s defense and the factual development materially different.
The order also said allowing the amendment would require the court to establish new deadlines, permit discovery on new factual issues and potentially delay entry of final judgment in the existing case.
What the order leaves in place
For now, the ruling leaves Wyoming’s heartbeat law in effect. It also signals that any challenge to the law will likely have to proceed in a separate lawsuit rather than being folded into the existing Natrona County case.
The court also noted it was not adopting some of the defendants’ alternative arguments. Campbell expressly said the court did not conclude that it lacked jurisdiction, did not find that plaintiffs’ counsel engaged in improper judge shopping and said retention elections for judges should not factor into judicial rulings.