Republicans Ask For Roe To Be Overturned | Democrats Ask For ACA To Get Get Another Supreme Court Review | Liberal Justices Ready Themselves For Dissent
January 6, 2020
A BIG ASK
|Happy New Year! We’re only a few days in and already there’s a lot to catch up on. For instance, last week 200 Republicans in Congress and 2 House Democrats asked the Supreme Court to consider overturning the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion. This enormous collection of legislators signed an amicus brief for the abortion case on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Gee. They also asked justices to consider overturning another landmark abortion ruling, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
GOOD AS IS
|On Friday, the Trump administration also weighed in on the upcoming abortion case that has its arguments scheduled for March. In the brief filed by the administration, SOLICITOR GENERAL NOEL FRANCISCO urged the high court to allow Louisiana’s law to go into effect, which would require doctors to have admitting privileges in a local hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the abortion is performed. Francisco argued that the law comports with Roe‘s precedent, not asking justices to go so far as to throw out that precedent.
ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?
|Also on Friday last week, Democrats asked the Supreme Court to take up a case that could upend the Affordable Care Act. As Margot Sanger-Katz with The New York Times writes, “It may seem paradoxical for Democrats to seek a swift resolution to a case that could upend a signature achievement of the Obama presidency. But keeping the case alive — and in the public eye — may help them politically, by sharpening the contrast between the two parties on an issue of great concern to voters.”
ANOTHER LOOK
|Lawrence Hurley with Reuters also covered the request from Democrats for SCOTUS to take a look at the Obamacare case. Democrats in the House of Representatives and 20 Democratic-led states want the high court to “hear their appeals of a Dec. 18 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that deemed the 2010 law’s ‘individual mandate’ that required people obtain health insurance unconstitutional.”
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
|Kimberly Robinson with Bloomberg Law reports that friends of a charity tied to the Koch brothers are “flooding” the Supreme Court with amicus briefs urging justices to take up a challenge to a California law that requires non-profit charities disclose their largest donors to state officials to assist them in investigating fraud. Twenty-two such amicus briefs have landed at SCOTUS, and Robinson’s reporting notes that the unusually high number of briefs so early in the litigation could be a signal of the case’s likelihood to be taken up.
READY? GET SET
|“The four liberal justices of the Supreme Court are steeling themselves for a momentous spring as the reality settles in that the left flank of the bench could remain at least one critical vote shy of a majority in ideologically driven cases for decades.” That’s Ariane de Vogue with CNN reporting on the tough road ahead for the liberals of SCOTUS as they ready themselves for a season of opinions that will cover closely followed issues such as executive power, reproductive rights, and health care. She outlines the cases touching each of those issues, and also points to public comments from justices, including ELENA KAGAN who recently spoke of the difficulty of finding consensus with her more conservative colleagues.