On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court made a surprise announcement that it would hand down one or more opinions today, without specifying which cases they would be ruling on.
#SCOTUS announces that it will hand down one or more opinions in argued cases tomorrow starting at 10:00 EST.
It psyched us out before, but a Friday hand-down day in December is … more than a little unusual. #SB8 or the Ramirez Texas capital case have to be leading candidates.
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) December 9, 2021
As many predicted, given the magnitude of the case, the court’s decisions did turn out to be related to S.B. 8, Texas’ abortion ban that deputizes civilians to enforce it. The news was not great.
The good(ish) news is that the court ruled that the lawsuits filed by abortion providers and advocates could move forward against some defendants.
The very bad news is that the court once again refused to block the law while those suits move forward, just as they did in September—meaning that for the last three and a half months, people in Texas have not had, and continue to not have, access to safe and legal abortion in their state.
And we have both #SB8 decisions! The good news is that the providers in WWH can move forward with their challenge against some named defendants
The bad news is the Court denied the Biden Administration’s request to block the law entirely
— Jessica Mason Pieklo (@Hegemommy) December 10, 2021
The beginning and end of the discussion should have been: #SB8 is unconstitutional and we’re going to stay it while we work all this other crap out.
That SB 8 remains in effect and abortion is basically banned in Texas demonstrates this SCOTUS doesn’t care about the rule of law.
— 🎅🏿Imani Gandy Cane🎅🏿 (@AngryBlackLady) December 10, 2021
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the dissent in the 5–4 case, focusing on the impact this decision will have on the court, rather than on women and pregnant or potentially pregnant people’s rights.
Roberts’ dissent seems to be taking his usual of approach of ‘I think abortion is icky but goddamn can y’all act like you have some sense? Some of us are trying to appear respectable while we take away people’s rights’
— Barred and Boujee (@AudreLawdAMercy) December 10, 2021
What that means is like, ‘I don’t like abortion n all, but we said there’s a constitutional right, and upholding constitutional rights is lowkey supposed to be our whole job, no? Y’all are making me look bad’
— Barred and Boujee (@AudreLawdAMercy) December 10, 2021
Justice Sonia Sotomayor also wrote a dissenting opinion, and once again, just as she did back in September, she truly annihilated the conservative majority with her opinion.
Sotomayor called the decision and its reasoning “perverse” and a “brazen challenge to our federal structure.” She said the argument behind this case “echoes the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South who insisted that States had the right to ‘veto’ or ‘nullif[y]’ any federal law with which they disagreed.”
“The Nation fought a Civil War over that proposition, but Calhoun’s theories were not extinguished,” she writes.
As she showed in September, Sotomayor has clear disgust for the fact that her conservative colleagues are allowing Texas to implement this attack on people’s constitutional rights through the law’s brazen loopholes.
“My disagreement with the Court runs far deeper than a quibble over how many defendants these petitioners may sue,” Sotomayor writes. “The dispute is over whether States may nullify federal constitutional rights by employing schemes like the one at hand. The Court indicates that they can, so long as they write their laws to more thoroughly disclaim all enforcement by state officials, including licensing officials. This choice to shrink from Texas’ challenge to federal supremacy will have far-reaching repercussions. I doubt the Court, let alone the country, is prepared for them.”
(image: Sergio Flores/Getty Images)
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