Sen. Jackson came out with a short video statement
in response to the decision.
Pro-life and pro-abortion advocates waited anxiously, believing that
recent Trump-appointed justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh might
swing the Supreme Court's decision in favor of pro-life values in line
with the constitution rather than pro-abortion judicial precedents. Both
Trump appointees voted in favor of Act 620, but Chief Justice John
Roberts joined with the four more left-leaning justices; thus outweighing
the recent changes in the Supreme Court's makeup.
Although he sided with the liberal justices in his decision, he did not contribute to their written opinion and instead wrote his own. “The
Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons,” Roberts wrote. “Therefore
Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”
Confusingly, Roberts voted in favor of the Texas law he referenced in his opinion.
Notre Dame law school professor Rick Garnett told CNA
that Justice Roberts has sided against judicial precedent before. “It is difficult to see why he did not do so here, too,” Garnett said. “Four years
hardly seems like enough time to convert a judicial mistake [the 2016 Whole
Woman’s Health decision Roberts referenced in his opinion] into an unmovable
monument.”
The rest of the justices siding with the majority opinion argued that
abortionists had issues gaining admitting privileges for reasons "unrelated
to competency," and the law, therefore, placed an undue burden on abortion
access.
In their dissenting opinions, pro-life judges argued that abortionists had
no legal standing to sue the State over Louisiana's law, arguing that
physicians don't have a legal right to perform abortions without regulation.
The dissenting justices also took issue with the fact that plaintiffs
claimed to be suing the state on behalf of possible future customers whose
access to abortion may be impacted by abortionists' inability to receive
admitting privileges. While claiming to sue on behalf of women seeking
abortions, they were actively challenging a law designed to keep abortion
safe.
Justice Samuel Alito argued that the plaintiffs in the case could easily have acted in bad faith to help prove their case. Justice Alito wrote, "[The
plaintiffs] had an incentive to do as little as they thought the District Court would demand," because if they failed to receive admitting privileges it would help prove their case. If they received admitting privileges, they would be held to a higher medical standard without any monetary benefit and likely fail to overturn Act 620. If they failed to receive admitting privileges (which they did), they could potentially overturn the law (which they also did).
