Supreme Court blocks Louisiana abortion law on 5-to-4 vote

Supreme Court blocks Louisiana abortion law on 5-to-4 vote




Pete Williams
7 hrs ago







Alex Wong Image: Pro-life and pro-choice activists during the March for Life in front 
of the Supreme Court on Jan. 19, 2018.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Louisiana from enforcing a law that women's groups said would leave only a single doctor legally allowed to perform abortions in the state.

By 5-4 vote, the court said the restrictions must remain on hold while challengers appeal a lower court decision in favor of the law.
It was the Supreme Court's first significant action on the hot-button issue of abortion since Donald Trump's nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, replaced Anthony Kennedy, who generally voted with the court's liberals to uphold abortion rights.
The vote was not a ruling on the legal merits of the Louisiana restriction, but the decision to keep the law on hold signals that a majority of the justices have doubts about its constitutionality.
Passed by the state legislature in 2014, the measure requires any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Two Louisiana doctors and a clinic filed a legal challenge, arguing that it was identical to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016. In that ruling, joined by Justice Kennedy, the court said Texas imposed an obstacle on women seeking access to abortion services without providing them any medical benefits.
The Center for Reproductive rights said Louisiana's law would leave only one doctor at a single clinic in New Orleans to perform the procedure, a drastic limitation that "cannot possibly meet the needs of approximately 10,000 women who seek abortion services in Louisiana each year."
But Louisiana officials urged the Supreme Court to let them begin enforcing the law. They said the challengers' claim of harm rested on the fear that clinics would be shut down overnight.
"But that is not correct. Louisiana envisions a regulatory process that begins, logically, with collecting information from Louisiana's abortion clinics and their doctors," the state said.
The Supreme Court's 2016 ruling, in a case called Whole Women's Health, said requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges was medically unnecessary, given that only a tiny fraction of abortions in the first trimester require hospitalization. By contrast the Texas law caused half the abortion clinics in the state to shut down, forcing women to endure longer travel and increased wait times.
It was the most important abortion ruling in 25 years and blocked similar restrictions in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.
In response to the lawsuit over Louisiana's identical law, a federal judge said it was likely unconstitutional and issued a stay, blocking its enforcement. But a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted to lift the stay. In a 2-1 ruling, the court said Louisiana's law would present far less of an obstacle than the Texas law would have. Less than one-third of Louisiana women seeking an abortion would face even the potential of longer wait times, the court said.
The appeals court concluded that the Louisiana law would not impose an "undue burden" on access to abortion, which has been the Supreme Court's key legal test for challenges to abortion restrictions for nearly three decades. The lower court's ruling was to have gone into effect February 4, but the Supreme Court put it on hold, giving itself more time to decide what to do.
Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights urged the court to keep the stay in place that blocks enforcement of the law. "The justices vowed, as nominees, to follow precedent, not upend it because one justice has retired and another taken his or her place. Even the dissenters in Whole Woman's Health, who include Chief Justice John Roberts, are obliged now to follow and apply it."
But Benjamin Clapper of Louisiana Right to Life called the law a common sense restriction. "Abortion facilities should not receive special loopholes opting them out of requirements that apply to all other outpatient surgical facilities."

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