Judge tosses ACLU suit over abortion rights of immigrants

A federal magistrate in San Francisco has dismissed an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit accusing the government of violating the rights of young, undocumented immigrants to abortion and contraceptive care by placing them in shelters run by Catholic organizations.

T heA CLU first challenged the practice under President Barack Obama’s administration, which awarded contracts to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to run shelters for thousands of minors who entered the United States on their own. The policy dated back at least to the George W. Bush administration, the ACLU said.

The case was put on hold after President Trump’s administration issued new orders in March 2017 prohibiting abortions for any immigrant minors in government-funded shelters. T heA CLU challenged that policy in a separate lawsuit in Washington, D.C., and won a ruling this March restoring the youths’ access to

abortion. The organization then argued in the San Francisco case that Catholic-sponsored shelters with government contracts were interfering with the rights of youngsters in their care.

But U.S. Magistrate Laurel Beeler said Thursday that Catholic shelters, while refusing to allow abortions or contraception for minors in their care, have allowed them to be transferred to other shelters with no such restrictions.

T heA CLU said those youths are often required to move long distances and have been harmed by delays in abortions and the loss of contact with family members, lawyers and social workers. But Beeler said the ACLU had suffered no harm and lacked legal standing to sue over the impact of the government’s policies on others.

The magistrate said she was expressing “no opinion about whether an unaccompanied minor, who may have suffered harm from being transferred or being delayed abortion services, might be able to bring a claim.” But she said the ACLU had failed to show that “any grant funding was used for any religious purpose or that any unaccompanied minor or trafficking victim who wanted an abortion or contraception was unable to obtain them.”

ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri said Friday the organization had the option of amending its suit to add youths as plaintiffs, or file a new suit on their behalf, as well as appealing the ruling. Once Beeler granted the ACLU standing to file the suit as a taxpayer, Amiri contended, she should have allowed a challenge to all of the government’s alleged constitutional violations.

“The government is endorsing the religious beliefs of the religious shelters, to the detriment of the population they’re supposed to be serving,” Amiri said.

The legal dispute also shed light on the abortion-related views of Brett Kavanaugh, then a federal appeals court judge and now a Trumpappointed justice on the Supreme Court. When his appeals court, while considering Trump’s ban on abortions for minors in custody, ruled that an undocumented 17-yearold in a governmentfunded shelter could have an abortion without waiting to be released to a private sponsor, Kavanaugh dissented and said such youths have no right to an “immediate abortion on demand.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko