The Supreme Court decision makes it difficult for abortion providers in Texas to prevent future civil lawsuits against them for performing abortions. Under the state law, any private citizen across the country can sue individuals thought to have assisted in violating the state’s so-called heartbeat ban.
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“The providers won in the sense that their challenge to S.B.8 is allowed to go forward against these state licensing officials, but more importantly, they lost in the sense that they can’t sue anyone else — so that even if their suit succeeds, it’s unlikely to provide them with the relief they need to reopen their doors, that is, to prevent future lawsuits against them for performing abortions,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
By a vote of 8-1, the court allowed the providers’ challenge to move forward against some state officials, but they divided 5-4 on whether other officials could be sued.
Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the court had agreed to hear the case to see if certain abortion providers could challenge the law. “We conclude that such an action is permissible against some of the named defendants but not others,” Gorsuch wrote.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for her liberal colleagues, said the court should have gone much further and blocked the law from going into effect when it had the chance back in September while the appeals process played out.
“The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before S. B. 8 first went into effect,” she said.
Sotomayor said it was a good thing that the challengers would be able to go into court to challenge the law and that she hoped that a district court would “act expeditiously” to enter the relief.
But, she said, because the court limited which officials could be sued, it will make the legal challenges more difficult to bring, which in turn, could make it more difficult for the providers to open their doors again.
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