For Immediate Release
October 23, 2025
Media Contact: Damon Sidur
[email protected]
BOISE — Attorney General Raúl Labrador filed a motion for summary judgment asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s Defense of Life Act. The motion reveals that Dr. Stacy Seyb, the physician bringing the challenge, never understood Idaho’s law nor read the January 2023 Idaho Supreme Court decision clarifying the state’s abortion laws when he transferred pregnant women out of state.
Dr. Seyb, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at St. Luke’s Health System, sued Idaho claiming the state’s abortion restrictions are unconstitutional. But his own deposition testimony undermines his claim because he referred patients out of state without learning what Idaho’s laws allow. He admitted he didn’t understand Idaho’s law, which permits physicians to perform abortions when the doctor, in good faith medical judgment, believes an abortion is necessary to prevent the woman’s death—without requiring certainty or imminence.
Dr. Seyb testified he never read the Idaho Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Planned Parenthood v. State that clarified doctors may use “good faith medical judgment” without “objective certainty” or requiring death to be “imminent.” He also claimed that he received no training on the Defense of Life Act from St. Luke’s. When asked how close to death a woman must be before he can perform an abortion, he testified: “I wish someone would answer that for me”—even though the Idaho Supreme Court answered that question a year before he airlifted patients out of state.
“The Idaho Supreme Court told doctors in 2023 they have broad clinical judgment to provide necessary care,” said Attorney General Labrador. “Dr. Seyb did not educate himself on what Idaho law permits, which is required of every doctor in Idaho. His patients suffered from his lack of understanding, not because of our laws.”
The case is Seyb v. Members of the Idaho Board of Medicine, pending before Judge B. Lynn Winmill in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
Read the motion here.
About Raúl Labrador
Raúl Labrador is the 33rd Attorney General of Idaho. The Office of the Attorney General provides legal representation for the State of Idaho. This representation is furnished to state agencies, offices and boards in the furtherance of the state's legal interests. The office is part of state government’s executive branch and its duties are laid out in the Idaho Constitution.
