The Supreme Court keeps Texas abortion law in place, but agrees to review it

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The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on Oct. 4.





Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images



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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images



Shots — Health News
The Texas Abortion Ban Hinges On ‘Fetal Heartbeat.’ Doctors Call That Misleading

The law’s unique approach is to take enforcement out of the hands of state officials, who normally can be sued in an effort to block an unconstitutional law, and instead put enforcement in the hands of private citizens. They are empowered instead to sue anyone who aids or abets an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and to obtain damage awards of at least $10,000 for each violation—an amount that in the aggregate would be potentially crippling for clinics that provide abortions. What’s more the law is so broad in its reach would seem to include as potential targets even people who drive patients to a clinics or those who help them go to other states to secure an abortion.



National
What The Texas Abortion Ban Does — And What It Means For Other States

In early September, the high court allowed the law to go into effect, turning away the challenge brought by of clinics, doctors, and their patients who sought to block the law while its merits were litigated in the lower courts.

The vote was 5-to-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberals in dissent. «The statutory scheme before the court is not only unusual but unprecedented,» Roberts wrote back then, noting that the «consequence appears to be to insulate the state from responsibility for implementing and enforcing the regulatory regime.»

With abortions all but shut down in Texas, and providers having failed to block the law, federal government went to court with a new challenge. It argued that the state law violates the equal protection guarantee of Fourteenth Amendment and that it violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits states from interfering with the federal government’s exercise of its constitutional powers.

On Oct. 6, federal judge Robert Pittman issued a temporary injunction barring Texas state judges and clerks from accepting the suits authorized under the law, known as S.B. 8.

In a 113-page ruling, Pittman said the law had been deliberately designed «for the chief purpose of avoiding judicial review.» As a result, he said, «people seeking abortions face irreparable harm when they are unable to access abortions» that they «are entitled to under the U.S. constitution.»

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which oversees Texas, promptly blocked Pittman’s order, reinstating the law and once again making abortions unavailable in the state after six weeks of pregnancy.

The Biden administration then appealed to the Supreme Court asking it to lift the Fifth Circuit order and to block the law while the case plays out on appeal in the lower court.

In the end, however, the court’s five most conservative justices did not budge. The Texas law will remain in operation, even though the court will hear the challenge to the law some time later in the term.