US Supreme Court blocks anti-abortion law
White House hits out as chief justice proves swing vote in striking down restrictive Louisiana rule
The decision was a blow for conservatives who hoped for a dramatic change in the court’s stance
AMERICA’S Supreme Court delivered a surprise victory for abortion advocates yesterday as it struck down a restrictive Louisiana law in the first major case on the issue in the Trump era.
John Roberts, the court’s chief justice, joined the bench’s four liberal justices in ruling that a law that can present administrative obstacles for abortion providers poses an unconstitutional obstacle to a woman’s right to an abortion.
Essentially, the Louisiana law requires abortion providers to also have special permissions to work in a nearby hospital in case anything goes wrong, but these can be difficult to obtain.
The decision was a blow for conservatives who had hoped for a dramatic change in the court’s stance on abortion issues since Donald Trump appointed two conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, to the bench.
The court’s swing vote, Justice Roberts, said the Louisiana law was virtually identical to one in Texas that the court struck down in 2016. His decision came as something of a surprise, since he voted in favour of the law in 2016. But while Justice Roberts said he continues to “believe that the [Texas] case was wrongly decided”, he argued that the court’s tradition of following precedent must be respected.
The ruling is one of the most significant examples of the Chief Justice’s new pivotal role as the swing vote on the nine-member bench.
This month, he also sided with the liberal justices in ruling that gay and transgender people should be protected from workplace discrimination under civil rights law, and a ruling protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the US illegally as children from deportation.
While the ruling poses a major setback for pro-life activists, there are still several other state laws making their way through court challenges that would ban abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
The White House hit out at yesterday’s abortion ruling, saying “the Supreme Court devalued both the health of mothers and the lives of unborn children”.
However, the Supreme Court offered a boost to the Trump administration in a second decision yesterday when it refused to intervene in the government’s decision to resume federal executions after a 17-year break.
The court said it would not consider a lawsuit challenging the use of a lethal injection on Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist, paving the way for the government to resume executions on July 13, the first since 2003.
Lee was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of a couple and their eight-year-old daughter in Arkansas as part of his plans to establish a white ethno-state. The United States attorney general, William Barr, said earlier this month that the Justice Department planned to resume executions and laid out plans for three executions in July and a fourth in August.
Lee’s execution has been scheduled for July 13. The three other convicted killers: Wesley Purkey, Dustin Honken and Keith Nelson; will be put to death sometime in July and August.
In a separate development, the US president courted controversy yesterday by sharing footage on Twitter of a white couple who pointed guns at black protesters calling for police reform in St Louis, Missouri, on Sunday evening.