The United States Supreme Court announced that it will overturn lower court rulings and allow abortion providers the right to sue Texas for a highly restrictive abortion bill, which bans the procedure after six months of pregnancy.
The Court stated that the Court will allow this process to continue, but it will not be allowed to proceed. it won’t stop enforcement of the lawIn the meantime. The law will continue to be in effect unless a lower court decides to suspend it.
The Friday morning decision was issued with eight justices in accord. took note of a 1908 Supreme Court precedentThis states that petitioners can challenge state laws and sue state officials. Justice Clarence Thomas was only one to disagree.
Texas legislators sought to avoid any challenges to the abortion law. Private individuals are responsible for enforcementThey have the right to sue abortion providers and anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion in the state for up to $10,000. This law prohibits abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and does not allow for incest or rape. It is the most restrictive anti-abortion measure in America.
While most justices agreed that abortion providers should have the right to sue the government over the law, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not in agreement.
In her dissent, Sotomayor referenced the Court’s failure to block enforcement of the law back in September.
“The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before [Texas’s law] first went into effect,” Sotomayor wrote. “It failed to do so then, and it fails again today.”
By refusing to place a stay on the law, “the Court effectively invites other States” to use Texas’s restrictive law as a “model for nullifying federal rights,” Sotomayor said, adding that “the Court thus betrays not only the citizens of Texas, but also our constitutional system of government.”
The Court’s opinion on the Texas law comes shortly after it heard arguments on a Mississippi abortion law, which restricts abortion access after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Court is now considering overturning the landmark abortion rights protections. Roe v. Wade1973 decision. Observers of the case’s proceedings have suggested that the conservative bloc justices, who currently comprise a majority of the High Court’s bench, We are ready to reverse those precedents.
The Court’s ruling on the Texas law comes just a day after a separate ruling by a Texas judge, who found that the law was not compliant with the state constitution. A Thursday opinion was issued. Texas District Court Judge David Peeples wrote that the statute was an “unlawful delegation of enforcement power to a private person.”
Peeples also noted that the law’s unique and strategic framework could be used to curtail a number of other constitutionally protected rightsIncluding marriage rights, gun ownership and freedom to speech
“We are a diverse and creative people and it seems naïve to hope that these procedures will be cabined voluntarily,” Peeples said.
