Trump’s Eighth Circuit Nominee Justin Smith Has Disturbing Anti-Abortion Record

President Trump nominated Justin Smith for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, but his record makes it clear he cannot be trusted to uphold and protect our fundamental rights, including reproductive freedom. Smith describes himself as a “Missouri lawyer fighting for faith, family, and freedom,” values he applies only when they align with ultraconservative ideology. Smith has spent his career advancing anti-abortion, extremist beliefs.

While in private practice at the James Otis Law Group, a far-right law firm with a track record of attacking reproductive rights, Smith defended the Arizona legislature’s attack on reproductive freedom that violated the state’s constitution. In 2024, Arizonans overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 139, the Arizona Abortion Access Act, which enshrined the right to abortion into the state constitution. Following the measure’s passage in 2025, health care providers filed suit to strike down state laws that violated the new constitutional guarantee. Republican lawmakers, aided by Smith, led the legal effort to defend the challenged restrictions: a ban on abortion care via telehealth, a ban targeting certain reasons for seeking care, and a law requiring people to make multiple, unnecessary trips to a health care provider before being able to receive care.

Smith advocated for these burdensome restrictions to block access to abortion care. Ultimately, an Arizona state superior court rejected Smith’s arguments and ruled in favor of protecting Arizonans’ right to abortion. Had Smith prevailed, Arizonans would have faced telehealth bans, reason-based restrictions, and medically unnecessary barriers to care–all in direct violation of rights voters enshrined in their state constitution.

Earlier in his career at the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which has led many national attacks on abortion access, Smith was one of the attorneys of record in Doe by Next Friend Rothert v. Chapman (8th Cir. 2022). In 2018, 17-year-old Jane Doe sought to access abortion care in Missouri. At the time, Missouri prohibited minors under the age of 18 from undergoing an abortion without the written consent of at least one parent or guardian. A minor could bypass this consent requirement if they could show a court either (1) they were “sufficiently mature” to make the decision themselves or (2) an abortion was in their “best interests.”

When Doe sought a judicial bypass, the circuit clerk of her county courthouse told her that the court was required to notify her parents of the hearing. Doe was forced to travel out of state for care, eventually obtaining a judicial bypass in neighboring Illinois and having an abortion. Later, Doe sued the clerk for violating her Fourteenth Amendment rights and the case ultimately reached the Eighth Circuit, where Smith argued that the clerk was shielded by quasi-judicial immunity and qualified immunity. The appeals court rejected both arguments, citing Supreme Court and Eighth Circuit precedents that clearly established requiring parental notice of a judicial bypass hearing unduly burdened pregnant minors. Had the Eighth Circuit sided with Smith, minors’ access to abortion in Missouri without parental interference would have been eliminated.

In this same capacity, Smith defended an eight-week abortion ban and a ban targeting certain reasons for seeking abortion care. In 2019, Missouri passed its most restrictive abortion ban with the signing of House Bill No. 126, banning abortion past eight weeks and restricting grounds on which someone could seek abortion care. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually blocked enforcement of both restrictions. Smith challenged the lower courts’ findings that the bans were unconstitutional and requested the Supreme Court to intervene, but the Court refused to consider the case.

Had Smith prevailed, the only abortion option for Missourians past eight weeks gestation would have been to travel outside the state to access care. Many people — including low-income people, people who already had children, people without paid vacation or time off, and young people — would likely have been unable to travel, forcing them to carry an unintended pregnancy to term against their will. Similarly, bans on certain reasons people seek care are often accompanied by performative concern, particularly for people with disabilities. Whether or not to continue a pregnancy or raise a child is a serious consideration that should be made by the pregnant person and their loved ones, informed by medically accurate information from their provider — not politicians.

As co-owner of the far-right law firm James Otis Law Group, Smith has been deeply involved in efforts to restrict reproductive rights across the country. He is the latest prominent member of the James Otis Law Group to be appointed to or nominated for a powerful position in the Trump administration or the federal judiciary. In 2025, Trump installed fellow James Otis lawyers D. John Sauer and Will Scharf as Solicitor General and White House staff secretary, respectively.

Smith has also served on the board of directors of several dark-money, far-right organizations, including the Publius Fund, the Yorktown Fund, First Principles Action, and the American Patriot Fighters, Inc. The Publius Fund and First Principles Action in particular have deep ties to Leonard Leo, the architect of the conservative legal movement’s decades-long campaign to reshape the federal judiciary, and Neil and Ann Corkery, key financiers of the far-right legal movement. Through his extensive involvement in these organizations, Smith has exhibited a deep commitment to advancing harmful right-wing agendas across a litany of issues.

Federal judges hold enormous power over our ability to exercise our fundamental rights, including reproductive freedom. Beyond the Trump-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and their devastating decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, we have seen the catastrophic impact that Trump’s anti-abortion judges have had on our rights.

With Trump and his allies pushing to install extreme loyalists on the federal bench, Smith’s nomination is yet another example of the MAGA agenda to impose their unpopular agenda on the people of this country through the courts — and we must do everything we can to push back. It is imperative that the Senate vehemently opposes Smith’s nomination.

Lucia Estrada is a legal fellow at Reproductive Freedom for All.
Alex Perron is a Dorot Fellow at Alliance for Justice.