The US Supreme Court has upheld the near-total ban on abortions in Texas while permitting abortion providers to mount legal challenges to the law in the lower courts. The move could allow a federal judge to formally block the law.
The justices on Friday ruled 8-1 to let lower courts hear a lawsuit brought by abortion providers against state licensing officials who would determine if the clinics violated the law – formally known as Texas’ Senate Bill 8 (or SB 8). It prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected in the fetus.
The decision comes more than a month after the court heard arguments from the Biden administration and abortion clinics, which had petitioned the court on the grounds that SB 8 amounted to a de facto criminalization of all abortions in the state.
“These provisions, among others, effectively chill the provision of abortions in Texas,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion. “Texas says that the law also blocks any pre-enforcement judicial review in federal court. On that latter contention, Texas is wrong.”
In a partial dissent, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her colleagues for failing to put the law on hold while lower courts hear the lawsuit. Noting that she hoped lower courts would move to stay the law, Sotomayor stated that the Supreme Court should have “put an end to this madness months ago.”
Meanwhile, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas partially dissented on the section of the ruling that allowed the clinics to sue state licensing officials, stating that he would have dismissed the lawsuit outright. The court had ruled not to let the lawsuit sue other officials it names as defendants, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The court also separately ruled that a challenge brought by the Biden administration was “improvidently granted,” noting that the federal government’s petition should not have been taken up by the court in the first place.
SB 8, which came into force in September, essentially bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The law, which only permits the procedure for “medical emergencies,” authorizes private citizens to enforce it by suing anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion.