Tag Archives: U.S. Supreme Court

Justices debate abortion rights in U.S. Supreme Court showdown

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday began hearing arguments in a case on whether to gut abortion rights in America as it weighs Mississippi’s bid to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, is hearing at least 70 minutes of oral arguments in the southern state’s appeal to revive its ban on abortion starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts blocked the Republican-backed law.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, challenged the law and has the support of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. A ruling is expected by the end of next June.

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a 1992 ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer quoted from the Supreme Court’s Casey ruling, which stated that the court should not bow to political pressure in overturning Roe and that such a ruling would “subvert the court’s legitimacy.”

“The right of a woman to choose, the right to control her own body, has been clearly set since Casey and never challenged. You want us to reject that line of viability and adopt something different,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

Sotomayor said Mississippi brought its new challenge purely because of changes on the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative.

“Will this institution survive the stench this creates?” Sotomayor asked, saying that it would give the impression that the Constitution and its interpretation is based purely on politics. “If people think it is all political … how will the court survive?”

Anti-abortion advocates believe they are closer than ever to overturning Roe, a longstanding goal for Christian conservatives.

Mississippi’s is one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed in Republican-governed states in recent years. The Supreme Court on Nov. 1 heard arguments over a Texas law banning abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy but has not yet issued a ruling.

Hundreds of protesters from both sides of the abortion debate rallied outside the white marble neoclassical courthouse ahead of the arguments. Anti-abortion protesters held huge signs reading “abortion is murder,” some carrying Christian crosses. Abortion rights activists chanted “what do we want? Abortion access. When do we want it? Now.”

FETAL VIABILITY

The Roe and Casey decisions determined that states cannot ban abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb, generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether viability was a central issue in the Roe or Casey rulings.

Mississippi’s 15-week ban directly challenged the viability finding. Even if the court does not explicitly overturn Roe, any ruling letting states ban abortion before fetal viability outside the womb would raise questions about how early states could prohibit the procedure. In the 1992 Casey ruling, the court said Roe’s “central holding” was that viability was the earliest point at which states could ban abortion.

While urging the court to overturn Roe, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, has said the justices could uphold its law by finding that a 15-week ban does not impose an undue burden. Such a ruling would wipe out the viability standard embraced in the Roe and Casey decisions, meaning the justices would have to consider where to draw the line.

Abortion rights advocates have said such a decision would eviscerate Roe, making it easier for conservative states to impose sweeping abortion restrictions.

Mississippi is among 12 states with so-called trigger laws designed to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Additional states also likely would move quickly to curtail abortion access.

If Roe were overturned or limited, large swathes of America could return to an era in which women who want to end a pregnancy face the choice of undergoing a potentially dangerous illegal abortion, traveling long distances to a state where the procedure remains legal and available or buying abortion pills online. The procedure would remain legal in liberal-leaning states, 15 of which have laws protecting abortion rights.

Abortion remains a contentious issue in the United States, as in many countries. In a June Reuters/Ipsos poll, 52% of U.S. adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% said it should be illegal in most or all cases.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter, Jan Wolfe and Julia Harte; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court wrestles with Puerto Rico’s exclusion from benefits program

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday tackled the question of whether a decision by Congress five decades ago to exclude Puerto Rico from a federal program that provides benefits to low-income elderly, blind and disabled people was unlawful.

Some of the nine justices posed tough questions during arguments in the case to the lawyer for the U.S. government, which has appealed a lower court ruling that Puerto Rico’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program exclusion violated a U.S. Constitution mandate that laws apply equally to everyone.

But it remained unclear whether the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, ultimately will rule in favor of Puerto Rican resident Jose Luis Vaello-Madero, who received SSI benefits when he lived in New York but lost eligibility when he moved to Puerto Rico in 2013.

Many Puerto Ricans have long complained that the Caribbean island’s residents are treated worse than other Americans despite being U.S. citizens. Puerto Rico, which is not a state, is the most-populous of the U.S. territories, with about 3 million people.

SSI benefits are available to American citizens living in any of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Northern Mariana Islands, but not the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.

If Vaello-Madero wins, more than 300,000 Puerto Rico residents could become eligible for the benefit at a cost that the U.S. government has estimated at $2 billion annually.

The Supreme Court has been instrumental in defining the legal status of Puerto Ricans dating to a series of rulings starting more than a century ago called the Insular Cases, some suffused with racist language. The rulings endorsed the notion that the people of newly acquired U.S. territories could receive different treatment than citizens living in U.S. states.

Vaello-Madero’s case gives the justices an opportunity to revisit those rulings. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed interested in doing so.

“Why shouldn’t we just admit that the Insular Cases were incorrectly decided?” Gorsuch asked.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents were from Puerto Rico, mentioned the history of Puerto Ricans being treated as second-class U.S. citizens.

“Puerto Ricans are citizens and the Constitution applies to them. Their needy people are being treated different than the needy people in the 50 states,” Sotomayor said.

The federal government’s central argument is that the congressional decision to exclude Puerto Rico was rational based on the fact that Puerto Ricans do not pay many federal taxes, including income tax.

Conservative justices wondered about the repercussions of a ruling favoring Vaello-Madero including whether other benefits would have to be extended to residents of U.S. territories.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that if there was “equal treatment across the board” then questions would be raised over whether Puerto Ricans should pay federal income taxes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Vaello-Madero’s lawyer made “compelling policy arguments” but noted that a clause of the Constitution specifically allows Congress to treat territories differently than states.

Kavanaugh said it is a part of the Constitution that “people would want to change” but that it is not the court’s role to do that.

Vaello-Madero is 67 years old and disabled. The government sued him in federal court in Washington in 2017 seeking more than $28,000 for SSI payments he received after moving to Puerto Rico.

Congress decided not to include Puerto Rico when it enacted the program in 1972. Puerto Ricans are eligible for a different government program, called Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled, that allows for more local control but not as much federal funding.

The appeal originally was filed by Republican former President Donald Trump’s administration. His Democratic successor Joe Biden has continued the appeal while at the same time urging Congress to extend SSI to Puerto Rico.

A provision extending SSI benefits to Puerto Rico is being considered as part of Democratic-backed social spending legislation being crafted in Congress. Enactment of the provision would limit the importance of the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling, due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court poised for major gun rights case from New York

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court returns to the divisive issue of gun rights on Wednesday with arguments in a challenge to New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns in public – a case that could imperil certain firearms restrictions nationally.

The justices are set to hear an appeal by two gun owners and the New York affiliate of the National Rifle Association, an influential gun rights group closely aligned with Republicans, of a lower court ruling throwing out their challenge to the state’s law, enacted in 1913.

Ahead of the oral arguments, advocates for gun control held a rally outside the courthouse, with victims of gun violence including former Democratic Representative Gabby Giffords speaking about their experiences. Giffords was shot in the head in 2011 at a community meeting in Arizona.

Across the street, a small group of gun rights activists posted signs including one reading, “We stand for the Bill of Rights,” a reference to the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Lower courts rejected the argument by the plaintiffs that the New York law violates the Second Amendment. The lawsuit seeks an unrestricted right to carry concealed handguns in public.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is considered sympathetic to an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.

The case could yield the most important gun rights ruling in more than a decade. The court in 2008 recognized for the first time an individual’s right to keep guns at home for self-defense, and in 2010 applied that right to the states.

New York’s law requires a showing of “proper cause” for carrying concealed handguns. To carry such a weapon without restrictions, applicants must convince a state firearms licensing officer of an actual, rather than speculative, need for self-defense.

Decisions by Justice Richard McNally Jr., a state trial court judge, to deny gun owners Robert Nash and Brandon Koch unrestricted concealed-carry licenses triggered the legal fight. Nash and Koch, along with the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, sued in federal court.

The plaintiffs have argued that the right to self-defense matters most outside the home because that is where the chance of confrontation is highest.

New York has justified its law by arguing that analogous restrictions run from medieval England through the founding of the United States and ever since. The plaintiffs have argued that centuries-old restrictions were limited to dangerous and unusual weapons, not common arms for self-defense like handguns, and that many of America’s founders “carried firearms and supported the right to do so.”

Advocates for gun restrictions fear that the New York case could threaten other state and local measures such as “red flag” laws targeting the firearms of people deemed dangerous by the courts, expanded criminal background checks for gun buyers or restrictions on selling untraceable “ghost” guns.

Eight states including New York empower officials to decide whether people can carry concealed handguns in public even if they pass criteria such as criminal background checks. New York has said that about two-thirds of applications for unrestricted permits are granted in the state, amounting to tens of thousands annually.

Gun rights, held dear by many Americans, are a contentious issue in a nation with high levels of firearms violence. President Joe Biden has called gun violence a “national embarrassment.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court leans toward allowing challenge to Texas abortion law

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared to lean toward allowing a challenge by abortion providers to a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on the procedure and lets private citizens enforce it, but seemed skeptical about whether President Joe Biden’s administration can do so.

The court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, heard three hours of oral arguments in separate challenges by abortion providers and the Democratic president’s administration to the Republican-backed measure considered the toughest abortion law in the United States.

Some justices signaled that existing Supreme Court precedent could accommodate the lawsuit brought by abortion providers despite the law’s novel design that makes it difficult for federal courts to block its enforcement. Instead of having state officials enforce a ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy – a time when many women do not realize they are pregnant – the law lets individual citizens enforce it through lawsuits against providers.

U.S. abortion rights are hanging in the balance as the justices review the Texas law before hearing arguments on Dec. 1 over the legality of a Mississippi measure prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

As the Texas challenges are being heard on an expedited basis, a decision potentially blocking the law could come quickly. In the challenge by abortion providers, the court on Sept. 1 declined to halt the law, with five of its six conservative justices in the majority. There were signs on Monday that some conservative justices were reconsidering their positions.

However, in the Biden administration’s challenge, conservative justices seemed skeptical about federal power to sue Texas over the law.

At issue is whether federal courts can hear lawsuits aimed at striking down the Texas law and whether the U.S. government even can sue to try to block it. If the justices keep federal courts out of the process by virtue of the law’s unique design, it could be replicated in other states and curtail abortion access in other parts of the country.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked clinic lawyer Marc Hearron about whether under the law’s structure the constitutional claims on the right to abortion could ever be “fully aired.” Under the Texas law, abortion providers can bring up that constitutional issue as a defense only after they have been sued.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed interest in an outcome raised by liberal Justice Elena Kagan in which state court clerks would be barred from allowing lawsuits brought by private individuals seeking to enforce the law to proceed while litigation over the legality of the measure unfolds.

Kavanaugh wondered whether the court should close a loophole that he said the Texas law “exploited” in its precedents concerning when state officials can be barred from enforcing unconstitutional laws.

Kavanaugh also pondered if states could pass similar laws that could infringe other constitutional rights including gun rights. A state, for example, could allow for $1 million in damages against anyone who sells an AR-15 rifle, he said.

His tone was more skeptical during the argument over the Biden administration’s September lawsuit aimed at stopping the Texas measure, describing it as “different and irregular and unusual.”

Kagan said the law was written by “some geniuses” to evade the broad legal principle that “states are not to nullify federal constitutional rights.”

Like Kavanaugh, Kagan warned of the consequences of states passing laws that infringe upon rights, including same-sex marriage and religious liberty. If the Texas law remains, “we would live in a very different world to the world we live in today,” she said.

Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito raised the question of whether anyone would have standing to sue under the Texas law without having a direct injury. Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone, defending the law, said “outrage” based on abortion opposition would be grounds to bring a lawsuit.

In the Biden administration’s challenge, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts questioned Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar on the “limiting principle” for the federal government suing states, noting that a different administration could also try to directly challenge states over their laws. Other conservative justices expressed similar doubts.

The Texas and Mississippi laws are among a series of Republican-backed abortion restrictions pursued at the state level in recent years. Lower courts blocked the Mississippi law.

LANDMARK RULING

Abortion opponents hope the Supreme Court will roll back abortion rights or even overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy and legalized the procedure nationwide.

The Texas measure enables private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. That feature made it more difficult to directly sue the state. Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits under the law. Biden’s administration has called it a “bounty.”

The Texas law has an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape.

The law’s design has deterred most abortions in Texas, which is the second most populous U.S. state, behind only California, with about 29 million people.

The Texas dispute reached the Supreme Court with unusual speed. The justices agreed to take up the matter on Oct. 22, bypassing lower courts that are considering the challenges.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to Texas abortion ban

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on Nov. 1 a challenge by President Joe Biden’s administration and abortion providers to a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on the procedure – a case that will determine the fate of the toughest abortion law in the United States.

It is the second major abortion case that the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has scheduled for the coming months, with arguments set for Dec. 1 over the legality of a restrictive Mississippi abortion law.

The Texas and Mississippi measures are among a series of Republican-backed laws passed at the state level limiting abortion rights – coming at a time when abortion opponents are hoping that the Supreme Court will overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade that legalized the procedure nationwide.

Mississippi has asked the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the Texas attorney general on Thursday signaled that he also would like to see that ruling fall.

The justices on Friday deferred a decision on the Biden administration’s request that the justices block the Texas law while the litigation continues, prompting a dissent from liberal Justice Sotomayor. Lower courts already have blocked the Mississippi law.

It is rare that the Supreme Court would, as it did in this case, decide to hear arguments while bypassing lower courts that were already considering the Texas dispute, indicating that the justices have deemed the matter of high public importance and requiring immediate review.

The Texas measure bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, a point when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant. It makes an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for cases of rape or incest.

The Biden administration sued in September, challenging the legality of the Texas law. In taking up the case, the Supreme Court said it will resolve whether the federal government is permitted to bring a lawsuit against the state or other parties to prohibit the abortion ban from being enforced.

The other challenge that the justices took up, filed by Texas abortion providers, asks the court to decide whether the design of the state’s law, which allows private citizens rather than the government to enforce the ban, is permissible. The providers, as well as the administration, have said the law is designed to evade federal court review.

Mississippi’s law bans abortions starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Rulings in that case and the Texas case are due by the end of June 2022, but could come sooner.

The Supreme Court previously allowed the Texas law to be enforced in the challenge brought by abortion providers. In that 5-4 decision on Sept. 1, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts expressed skepticism about how the law is enforced and joined the three liberal justices in dissent.

The Texas law is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. That feature has helped shield the law from being immediately blocked as it made it more difficult to directly sue the state.

Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits. Critics have said this provision lets people act as anti-abortion bounty hunters, a characterization its proponents reject.

The Biden administration had asked the Supreme Court to quickly restore a federal judge’s Oct. 6 order temporarily blocking the law. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put that order on hold a few days later.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Texas urges U.S. Supreme Court to maintain state’s abortion ban

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – Texas on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to keep in place a state law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion while it defends the Republican-backed measure against a legal challenge brought by President Joe Biden’s administration.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded in a legal filing to the U.S. Justice Department’s request that the Supreme Court quickly block the state law while the court battle over its legality goes forward.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, previously allowed the law to be enforced in a separate challenge brought by abortion providers. In that 5-4 decision on Sept. 1, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts expressed skepticism about how the law is enforced.

The Texas measure, one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed at the state level in recent years, bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy, a point when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant. It makes an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for cases of rape or incest.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

Biden administration asks U.S. Supreme Court to block Texas abortion law

By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion, calling the Republican-backed measure plainly unconstitutional and specifically designed to evade judicial scrutiny.

The administration asked the Supreme Court to quickly reverse a decision this month by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift a judge’s order blocking the law while litigation over the statute’s legality continues. The justices in a 5-4 Sept. 1 decision let the law take effect in a separate challenge brought by abortion providers in the state.

The Texas measure, one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed at the state level in recent years, bans the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy, a point when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant.

The Justice Department, which filed suit last month in a bid to stop the law, told the Supreme Court in a filing that the 5th Circuit’s action enables the ongoing violation by the state of Texas “of this court’s precedents and its citizens’ constitutional rights.”

“Texas’s insistence that no party can bring a suit challenging S.B. 8 amounts to an assertion that the federal courts are powerless to halt the state’s ongoing nullification of federal law. That proposition is as breathtaking as it is dangerous,” the Justice Department added, using the formal name of the Texas law.

The filing also said that “given the importance and urgency of the issues” involved the Supreme Court could decide to take up and hear arguments in the case even before lower courts have issued their own final rulings.

The Texas measure makes an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for cases of rape or incest. It also gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the fetus. That feature has helped shield the law from being immediately blocked by making it more difficult to directly sue the state.

Under the law, individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits. Critics have said this provision lets people act as anti-abortion bounty hunters, a characterization its proponents reject.

The Biden administration’s lawsuit argued that the law impedes women from exercising their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy as recognized in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. It also argued that the law improperly interferes with the operations of the federal government to provide abortion-related services.

In his Oct. 6 ruling blocking the law, U.S. Judge Robert Pitman found that the measure was likely unconstitutional and designed to avoid judicial scrutiny. Pitman said he would “not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. When the Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts dissented along with the three liberal justices, expressing skepticism about how the measure is enforced.

Roberts said he would have blocked the law’s enforcement at that point “so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner.”

Supreme Court asked Texas to respond to the Justice Department’s request by midday on Thursday.

The Supreme Court already is set to consider a major abortion case on Dec. 1 in a dispute centering on Mississippi’s law banning abortions starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy, Mississippi has asked the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. A ruling in the Mississippi case is due by the end of next June.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York and Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court again protects police accused of excessive force

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted requests by police officers in separate cases from California and Oklahoma for legal protection under a doctrine called “qualified immunity” from lawsuits accusing them of using excessive force.

The justices overturned a lower court’s decision allowing a trial in a lawsuit against officers Josh Girdner and Brandon Vick over the fatal shooting of a hammer-wielding man in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

They also overturned a lower court’s decision to deny a request by Union City, California police officer Daniel Rivas-Villegas for qualified immunity in a lawsuit accusing him of using excessive force while handcuffing a suspect.

The brief rulings favoring the police in the two cases were unsigned, with no public dissents among the justices. They were issued in cases that were decided without oral arguments.

The qualified immunity defense protects police and other government officials from civil litigation in certain circumstances, permitting lawsuits only when an individual’s “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights have been violated.

The decisions on Monday indicate that the justices still think lower courts are denying qualified immunity too frequently in excessive force cases involving police, having previously chided appeals courts on that issue in recent years.

Reuters in 2020 published an investigation that revealed how qualified immunity, with the Supreme Court’s continual refinements, has made it easier for police officers to kill or injure civilians with impunity.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Justice Dept. to ask Supreme Court to put Texas abortion law on hold -spokesman

(Reuters) -President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block a restrictive Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion after a federal appeals court reinstated the law.

The U.S. Justice Department will request the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to reverse the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to lift a judge’s order blocking the law, while litigation over the dispute continues, a spokesman said.

The Texas measure, which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, took effect on Sept. 1. It makes an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for cases of rape or incest.

The law is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. That feature has helped shield the law from being immediately blocked as it made it more difficult to directly sue the state.

Critics of the law have said this provision lets people act as anti-abortion bounty hunters.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung and Brendan O’Brien; Additional reporting by Sarah Lynch; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

U.S. Supreme Court weighs Kentucky official’s bid to defend abortion law

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – In another case stemming from a restrictive abortion law, U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday signaled a willingness to let Kentucky’s Republican attorney general defend his state’s statute – struck down by lower courts – after its Democratic governor dropped the case.

The arguments heard by the nine justices did not involve the legality of the 2018 law, focusing instead on the narrow legal issue of whether Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron can take over the defense of it in a bid to revive the measure.

The dispute highlighted the sometimes messy conflicts that arise when a governor and a state’s top legal officer differ in political views or party, leading to disagreements on whether to defend certain state laws in court.

Both liberal and conservative justices asked questions during the argument that indicated sympathy toward ensuring that Cameron, as attorney general, retains the power to act even after the political party of the governor changes hands.

Republican-backed abortion restrictions enacted by numerous U.S. states in recent years have continued to draw the attention of the nation’s highest judicial body.

Abortion rights advocates have said that Kentucky’s law would effectively ban an abortion method called dilation and evacuation – the most common form performed during the second trimester of a pregnancy – effectively banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The justices must decide whether Cameron can now try to defend the law after lower courts already ruled that it violated Supreme Court precedents holding that women have a right under the U.S. Constitution to obtain an abortion. Governor Andy Beshear’s administration dropped the case.

Abortion opponents are hopeful that the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, will pare back abortion rights this term. The justices will hear arguments in December over a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a case in which that state is asking the court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

EMW Women’s Surgical Center, an abortion clinic in Louisville, challenged Kentucky’s law, which was signed by then-Governor Matt Bevin, a Republican. Bevin subsequently lost his re-election bid to Beshear in 2019.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer noted during the argument that Republicans and Democrats often hold different views on abortion, and that after the new Democratic administration dropped the case Cameron stepped in.

“At that point for the first time we have an attorney general who thinks it’s a pretty good statute – he wants to defend it,” Breyer said “… So if there’s no prejudice to anybody – and I can’t see where there is – why can’t he just come in and defend the law?” Breyer asked a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union representing the abortion clinic.

The Beshear administration’s health department continued to defend the law in court after he took office. But after the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down in 2020, his administration decided not to press the matter further.

Cameron then sought to take over the defense. The 6th Circuit denied that request, saying it was too late for Cameron’s office to step in.

The Kentucky law is one of a growing number passed by Republican legislators at the state level imposing a variety of restrictions on abortion. The justices last month allowed a near-total ban on abortion in Texas to go into effect.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)