https://archive.org/details/LegalGeekEp78
This year's Supreme Court term has been most notably defined by the absence of Justice Scalia and important decisions on immigration policy and affirmative action. Indeed, Scalia's absence made a risk for a 4-4 split in the Texas Abortion Case, which would've upheld the decision of the 5th Circuit that a recent Texas law restricting abortion clinics was constitutional.
However, that did not occur as the court split 5-3 along normal ideological lines, with swing vote Justice Kennedy joining the majority just as he did back in 1992 in the landmark Planned Parenthood v Casey abortion decision. Ironically, he's the only majority vote from the Casey decision still present at the Court today.
Under the rules of Roe v Wade in the 70s and Casey, the standard applied for abortion-restrictive state laws is that if a state law places a substantial obstacle or undue burden in the path of a woman's right to access an abortion and exercise her rights to do so, such a law is unconstitutional. This is true even when the law promotes a legitimate state interest such as women's health and safety, which is also required under the constitutional analysis.
Turning to the 2013 Texas law, two new requirements were applied: first, that a doctor performing an abortion at an abortion clinic had to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 50 miles of the clinic; second, that a clinic must meet the same standards as ambulatory surgery centers. Neither of these requirements survived constitutional scrutiny in the majority's decision, written by Justice Breyer.
With respect to the admitting privileges requirement, which had already gone into effect, the Court found that this did not advance the interest of women's health in any way. Furthermore, it put an undue burden on access to abortion based mostly on the number of clinics in Texas being cut roughly in half from 42 to 19 after this requirement was enacted.
With respect to the ambulatory surgery center standards requirement, the Court again found that this did not advance the interest in health but was instead targeted at this sole procedure, as other more dangerous procedures such as child birth, colonoscopies, and liposuction were not also subject to such requirements. If this part of the law had gone into effect, the number of clinics would have been halved again to about 7 or 8, only in 5 major metropolitan areas. That was sufficient evidence to again let the Court conclude that this requirement created an undue burden on the right to choose.
With both requirements failing the Casey test, the Texas law was stricken as unconstitutional. The dissents from Justices Alito and Thomas focused more on legal procedural issues like res judicata and severability clauses, rather than the Casey test, which makes this decision less contested and split compared to last year's gay marriage decision and dissents.
The Bottom Line is, this Court continues to strongly protect constitutional rights in a broad manner, with this possibly being the most significant abortion-related decision since Roe and Casey. By applying those prior tests as strongly as was done in this Texas Abortion Case, the woman's right to choose is on more solid ground than ever, being seemingly safe from any targeted legislative attack from a state. Perhaps this will cause states like Texas to drop the debate over abortion and move on to other social issues of our time.
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Thanks for reading. Please provide feedback and legal-themed questions as segment suggestions to me on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy
Thanks for reading. Please provide feedback and legal-themed questions as segment suggestions to me on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy
TEMPORARY CLOSER
If you will be at GenCon in Indianapolis in August, come check out my seminars on IP law and game design there, or message me on Twitter @BuckeyeFitzy and we can meet up for a drink or a game.
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