WAPO OP ED: SCOTUS gets 2nd chance to block TX abortion law. It should take it.

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/19/supreme-court-gets-second-chance-texas-abortion-law/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions&utm_campaign=wp_opinions

The Supreme Court is getting a second chance to block the Texas abortion law. It should take it.

Opinion by Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor
Yesterday at 3:09 p.m. EDT

Rejecting a plea by Texas abortion providers to block the law, five conservative justices acknowledged the “serious questions regarding the constitutionality” of the law but allowed the manipulative scheme to take effect for the time being, saying the abortion providers’ lawsuit “presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions” that prevented the court from intervening.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit was an aggressive move. It’s not every day the U.S. government barges into court to assert that it is there not because any federal law is being violated but because its citizens’ constitutional rights are being harmed.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit lifted that order and allowed the Texas law to resume. The appeals court’s four-sentence order was a particularly sloppy bit of legal reasoning — it said it was acting “for the reasons stated” by the appeals court when it refused to stop the law from taking effect in the case brought by abortion providers. That made no sense: The “reasons stated“ in the other case involved the 11th Amendment limitations that don’t apply to the federal government.

Now they have another chance. By “they,” I mean Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the two justices most likely to switch positions. The best outcome would be if they took the plunge together, creating a 6-to-3 vote to block the Texas law. This would not be a flip-flop — the legal issues are different — but would help lower the volume of criticism enveloping the court. Maybe the federal government doesn’t have the power it claims here, but issuing a stay wouldn’t bind the court to any particular outcome. It would simply be putting the law on hold while the case proceeds.

[lark]

1. That would require intellectual honesty and these are rw liars who put dogma over law.

Both of them are committed anti-abortionists who think women should have no say in whether or not they bear children, it's required by their religion and that's what they both follow - not the law. They both disdain Roe v wade and Handmaiden has already said she will feel free to ignore all precedents the right wing disagrees with.