2025 Was Busy Year For Challenges to North Dakota Laws With Appeals Likely in 2026

(Pool photo by Tanner Ecker/Bismarck Tribune via the North Dakota Monitor)

(North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota courts this year sided with the state in two civil rights lawsuits challenging sweeping restrictions on abortion and transgender medical care adopted by the Legislature in 2023.

Meanwhile, a district court judge sided with landowners in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a law that affects underground carbon storage. Other ongoing cases include a lawsuit from two tribes against the state’s redistricting map, which could get review from the U.S. Supreme Court, and a free speech challenge against a North Dakota law regulating campaign advertisements.

North Dakota’s near-total abortion ban survived its review before the North Dakota Supreme Court after the justices failed to reach the supermajority vote required to declare it unconstitutional.

Three of five justices in a November opinion found the law unconstitutionally vague, but a vote of four is needed to strike it down.