What a kick it was, earlier today, to see the Supreme Court put the kibosh – yet again! – on one of the GOP’s most notorious anti-abortion scams, this time in Louisiana.
And John Roberts made it possible. It’s probably just a matter of time before Trump tries to link him to Antifa.
We all know that Republicans are obsessed with regulating ladies’ private parts – which is one of the big reasons why the majority of women reject them in every presidential election. At the state level, Republicans have concocted obstacles designed to stop women from exercising their constitutional right to a first-trimester abortion. Women gained that right 47 years ago in Roe v. Wade, but the GOP strategy – in states like Texas and Louisiana – has long been to close down clinics via draconian rules.
Four years ago, the Supreme Court (with Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote) threw out the Texas law, ruling that its provision requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals had nothing to do with women’s health. Local hospitals were refusing to give abortion doctors admitting privileges (which they didn’t need in the first place), which in turn forced dozens of clinics to close. But the high court nixed the Texas law because it imposed “an undue burden” on women seeking to exercise their Roe rights.
And this morning – with Roberts as the swing vote, siding with the four liberal justices – the Supreme Court threw out the Louisiana law that was virtually identical to the Texas law. Trump’s lawyers had argued in favor of the Louisiana law (natch), which was threatening to leave all Louisiana women with just one clinic, but the court majority said the Louisiana law was also “an undue burden” on women.
So Trump and the Christian conservatives in his shotgun marriage have been foiled again – for the third time in two weeks. The high court has upheld job protection for gays and trans people, and protected the Dreamers from Trumpist deportation. Some folks on the religious right must be asking themselves, “We sold our souls to an amoral con man for all this?”
Now for the really fun part: John Roberts, in joining the four court liberals, basically said he was agreeing to toss Louisiana only because the court had already tossed Texas. Conservatives are supposed to respect judicial precedent, right? Here’s what he said: “The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us…to treat cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore, Louisiana’s law cannot stand on our precedents.”
Roberts was the only conservative justice to stand on principle. Trump’s two appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, voted to trash principle and keep the Louisiana law – which is amusing (if you’re into dark humor) given Kavanaugh’s promise that he would respect judicial precedent. His most infamous suckered supporter, Senator Susan Collins, said after her Yes vote that Kavanaugh told her “personally many times” that he considered abortion rights to be settled law, “precedent upon precedent.”
But hey, Kavanaugh gave it the old college try. Trump’s Christian right allies must surely be frustrated that they can’t seem to impose their morality on the rest of us by crippling or killing Roe. And isn’t that what Trump promised them, in exchange for supporting with a thrice-married lying carnival barker? Indeed he did. During one of the presidential debates, he decreed that if he became president, the eradication of Roe “will happen, automatically in my opinion.”
Another broken promise. Legally speaking, today’s court ruling is another victory for the constitutional right to choose, and, politically speaking, it may well force some evangelicals to rethink their futile Faustian pact with Trump and stay home on election day. I’m good with that.