Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS)
granted the request of abortion facility owners to suspend a central provision
of a Texas pro-life law until a federal appeals court rules on its
constitutionality. [You can read about
this TX law in my March 14, 2014 blog posting.]
That
decision could allow as many as a dozen abortion facilities unwilling or unable
to meet tighter safety and health requirements to reopen their doors.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices
stopped the state of TX from requiring abortion facilities to meet the same
health and safety standards as other ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs). The order noted that Justices Antonin Scalia,
Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas were the three; which mean that Chief Justice
John Roberts voted with the majority. The
document did not elaborate on the justices’ reasons for granting the stay.
SCOTUS struck a huge blow to the
health and safety of women throughout TX by blocking a federal appeals court
ruling that demanded abortionists obtain admitting privileges at hospitals in
order for their facilities to remain open, said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. In the name of access to abortion instead of
the protection of women’s health and safety, the high Court is allowing
facilities operating under subpar standards to remain open.
In another decision, SCOTUS ruled to
block Wisconsin from implementing its new voter identification law on the eve
of next month’s elections. The stay,
issued after an appeals court had told Wisconsin a few weeks ago to use the law
in an upcoming election, overrules at least temporarily a unanimous decision by
the appellate court that had followed the Supreme Court’s ruling for Indiana in
its judgment. SCOTUS’s order reverses a
trend established by the justices in two other cases from Ohio and North
Carolina, in which they allowed voting restrictions imposed by Republican
legislatures to take effect. The high Court
majority’s one-paragraph order gave no reason; but the fact that this year’s
election is less than a month away may have been the key factor. Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas dissented, arguing that SCOTUS cannot block an appeals court
ruling unless the lower court “clearly and demonstrably erred in its
application of accepted standards.”
Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog thinks that the issue may not
be the ruling — which again relied on SCOTUS’s decision regarding Indiana’s
identical voter-ID law — but the timing. With an election just a few weeks away, the
issue of confusing voters and elections judges may have created enough concern
that the Court decided to intervene temporarily.
The Wisconsin law, challenged by
civil rights and citizens’ advocacy groups, was described by them as “one of
the strictest voter ID laws in the country.” It would require voters to show one of only
nine specific forms of identification to cast a ballot. Apparently, thousands of Wisconsin voters
have already cast ballots without producing the kind of ID required, and tens of
thousands reportedly do not have the right kind of ID.
This likely kills any chance for
Wisconsin to implement the law before the midterm elections in three weeks. The state would have to ask for an emergency hearing,
and then for rapid action from the Court in order to get the law approved for
use in time for Election Day.
Both the timing and the
equal-protection concerns evaporate after the election, though. With the law modeled on Indiana (and the
state’s ID issuance policy now in line with Indiana as well), the likely outcome
of this case will be the same, too. However,
if Democrats take control of Wisconsin state government in November, expect
this to be one of the first laws that get repealed.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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