Texas’ new anti-abortion law drop kicked approval 5-4
decision reported on here from
The Week with four fiery minority rebuttals and this headline:
“Chief Justice Roberts, 3 other
dissenters slam colleagues for hastily rewarding Texas 'bounty hunter' abortion
ban scheme”
Short intro: A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court said it will not block a new Texas
law that deputizes any Texan to help enforce a six-week ban on abortions.
The four dissenters — Chief Justice John Roberts and
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — argued in separate rebuttals that
their five colleagues, without any real debate, were rewarding Texas
lawmakers for inventing a novel scheme to stomp on decades of Supreme
Court precedent.
Chief Justice Roberts
wrote saying he would have granted “preliminary relief” at least until: “The
statutory scheme before the Court is not only unusual, but unprecedented, the
courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in
such a manner. Instead, the court allowed the law to take effect before lower
courts weighed in, without ordinary merits briefing, and without oral
argument.”
Justice Sotomayor was
more direct, calling the court's decision: “Stunning, and the 5-justice
majority opted to bury their heads in the sand while Texas flouts nearly 50
years of federal precedents by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional
laws to its citizenry. Essentially, the Texas Legislature has deputizes the
state's citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly
prosecuting their neighbors' medical procedures with their decision that rewards
this breathtaking act of defiance — of the Constitution, of this court's
precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.”
Justice Breyer wrote
that he doesn't see how Texas' enforcement-delegation scheme “should make a
critical difference, since it still threatens to invade a constitutional right.
The court should not have greenlighted a patently unconstitutional law with
barely any discussion and less than 72 hours thought. The five justices gave
only cursory review to the submitted documents, and barely bothers to explain
its conclusion.”
A scheme that a challenge to an obviously unconstitutional abortion regulation backed by a wholly unprecedented enforcement scheme is unlikely to prevail.
In all these ways, the majority's decision is emblematic
of too much of this court's shadow-docket decision
making — which every day becomes more unreasoned,
inconsistent, and impossible to defend.”
My 2 Cents: As many sources are reporting, and as Ob-Gyn experts say, and
most, if not all women who have been pregnant say: “Most do not even know they are
pregnant at six weeks – a medial fact.”
Texas’ GOP-run government has to be the nastiest, meanest, and harshest state in the nation – close seconds are a few RED states such as FL, AL, GA, AZ just to name a few others who will surely copy this Texas format – why?
All of them are deadset on ovrturning Roe v Wade (1973) and have been for decades. They are ultra-far right and near-sighted and strongly against a woman's right to choose her own heath care as well as any common sense laws and the legal
precedence like in Roe v. Wade which they hate with a passion (albeit a
misguided and totally irrational passion at that).
I suspect the lower courts
will be flooded with lawsuits – so, his is far from over.
This key part from Chief Justice Roberts (AP report) may be a signal to the lower courts in that regard.
He wrote in part
regarding the majority’s denial of the request for emergency relief: “The
Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as
sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”
That is a signal that other litigation will be forthcoming and is expected – then a new court ruling overall will have to apply with no punting like on this one (and that is to save Roe v Wade and the dignity of the court).
Thanks for stopping by.
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