Supreme Court lets Texas abortion law continue but says providers can sue - CNN
(CNN)The Supreme Court left in place Friday a Texas abortion law that bars the procedure after the first six weeks of pregnancy, but the justices said that abortion providers have the right to challenge the law in federal court.
The court's action means that the case will return to a district court for further proceedings, opening up the possibility that the law could soon be suspended.
The opinion allows the providers to challenge the law in court giving them a narrow victory. But the court limited which state officials could be sued by the providers, which could make it difficult for the providers to resume providing abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.
The court's order came after oral arguments where two of the court's conservative justices called into question Texas' argument that the law could not be challenged by either abortion providers or the Biden administration in federal court.
The law has been in effect for more than three months.
On September 1, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, allowed the law to go into effect while the appeals process played out with Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the liberals in a dissent. Since then, women in Texas have scrambled across state borders to obtain the procedure and poor women -- without the means to travel -- were left with few options.
Lawyers fighting the law called it blatantly unconstitutional and designed with the express intent to make challenges in federal court nearly impossible, therefore nullifying a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.
"Texas designed SB 8 to thwart the supremacy of federal law in open defiance of our constitutional structure," said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the Justice Department, during oral arguments on November 1. "States are free to ask this court to reconsider its constitutional precedents, but they are not free to place themselves above this court, nullify the court's decisions in their borders and block the judicial review necessary to vindicate federal rights."
SB 8, the law in question, bars abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat at around six weeks -- often before a woman knows she is pregnant -- and is in stark contrast to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
While both the providers and the Biden administration had won challenges in federal district court, the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed those decisions and allowed the law to remain in effect.
The law's novel structure, which bars state officials from enforcing it, is a central part of the litigation.
Instead, private citizens -- from anywhere in the country -- can bring civil suits against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the law. Critics say the law was crafted to shield it from challenges in federal courts and stymie attempts by abortion providers and the government to sue the state and block implementation.
source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/10/politics/texas-abortion-law-scotus/index.html
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