The justices struck down a Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have the right to admit patients at nearby hospitals.
- From ScotusBlog.
Louisiana's Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, is unconstitutional.
- From Oyez.
Question: Does the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, below, upholding Louisiana’s law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital conflict with the Court’s binding precedent in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt?
- From Vox: Why conservative Chief Justice Roberts just struck down an anti-abortion law - Roberts didn’t save abortion rights, he told future litigants how to bury them.
Only one thing has changed between June Medical and Whole Woman’s Health. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a relatively moderate conservative who cast the key fifth vote to strike down the Texas law, is no longer on the Court. And his replacement, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, opposes abortion rights. Kavanaugh dissented in June Medical.
So abortion opponents apparently bet that the replacement of Kennedy with Kavanaugh would allow them to litigate Whole Woman’s Health all over again — but with a different result. They bet wrong.
The fact that June Medical is almost entirely identical to Whole Woman’s Health forms the basis of Roberts’s opinion. “I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided,” the chief justice writes. Nevertheless, “the question today however is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.”
Ultimately, Roberts concludes that the principle of stare decisis — the doctrine that courts should generally be bound by their prior decisions — compels him to strike down Louisiana’s law. “The result in this case is controlled by our decision four years ago invalidating a nearly identical Texas law,” Roberts concludes.
As a practical matter, that means the constitutional right to an abortion is likely to survive for at least another year or two. But Roberts also signals that he’s open to a lawsuit challenging this right on other grounds.
The takeaway from Roberts’s opinion isn’t that the right to an abortion is safe. It’s that Roberts is reluctant to bend the Court’s ordinary procedures to hand abortion opponents a victory in this particular case.
