AG's office asks for rehearing in abortion ban case

Attorney General Douglas Moylan is once again pushing to get a federal court to review an injunction that blocks Guam’s 1990 abortion ban from being enforced.

The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear arguments over the blocked 1990 abortion ban this past October, and a federal appeals court dismissed the case as moot last month.

Latest filings by the AG’s office don’t ask federal courts to decide whether the ban can be enforced—the Supreme Court of Guam has already deemed it can’t be—only to remove an injunction blocking the enforcement of the ban.

Past filings from the office note that even if there’s no ban to enforce, the injunction on the ban could open the office up to sanctions or being found in contempt of court.

Attorneys hired by the AG’s office this week filed a petition for a rehearing on the case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

According to the petition, there’s no reason for the injunction against abortion ban, Public Law 20-134, to stand if the case is actually moot, or already resolved.

Judges for the Ninth Circuit appeals court last month found the case was moot, or already resolved, because the Supreme Court of Guam had found the ban unenforceable way back in October 2023.

“Although the panel dismissed this case as moot, it did not vacate the district court’s final judgment,” attorneys for the AG wrote in a May 12 petition.

It was standard practice for appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate injunctions when a case was found moot, the petition states.

Attorneys for the AG note that Moylan and his office are barred from enforcing a law that the Guam Supreme Court held “has been repealed.”

Guam Supreme Court justices in 2023 found that after federal courts blocked enforcement of the 1990 ban, Guam senators passed several laws regulating legal abortions.

Because of that, the 1990 ban was “repealed by implication,” local justices found.

Notably, the matter now before the federal appeals court does not challenge those specific findings, only the need for an injunction.

Attorneys in the May 12 petition note that in the past, federal courts have removed injunctions on laws when those laws were repealed.

“The Guam Supreme Court’s decision may have resolved the underlying dispute about the validity and enforceability of Public Law 20-134, but it didn’t resolve the dispute about what should happen to the injunction. In fact, it provides an additional reason to vacate the injunction since the repeal of a law is ordinarily a reason to vacate an injunction,” they wrote.

They asked for the court to vacate the injunction, or else rehear the case.

$1 million contract

The office of the governor, in a press release earlier this month, criticized Moylan’s office for a contract valued at $1 million for the firm Consovoy McCarthy PPLC, hired to represent Moylan in federal court cases.

Attorneys for the firm are signed on to the latest filings in the abortion ban.

They also represented the AG’s office in a separate petition to the U.S. Supreme Court in Moylan’s dispute with Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero over the AG’s power to prosecute government corruption.

Moylan told the Pacific Daily News in a statement last week that the amounts billed to the firm are “nowhere close” to the $1 million mark, though he did not specify the amounts paid to date.

A copy of the initial contract to Consovoy dated May 2023 notes the firm is paid an hourly rate of $595 to represent the AG’s office, up to a cap of $175,000.

The contract notes the firm will continue representing the AG’s office until a resolution is found in the abortion ban case.

A $1.175 million contract to the firm is lumped in with about $1.5 million worth of contracts the governor’s office is now looking to appoint a special prosecutor to probe the AG over.

Moylan accused the governor of “blind rage and retaliation for acts my general crimes, government corruption and civil prosecutors and (attorneys) have undertaken since I took office.”

“Her fear of being outed for all the corruption for the past six years, many of which came from the elected public auditor, seems to underlie her childish releases,” Moylan stated.

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