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      DC media makes meal of supposed Sotomayor restaurant sighting

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      DC media makes meal of supposed Sotomayor restaurant sightingNewsletter reports supreme court justice dined with Democrats after incorrectly identifying Chuck Schumer’s wife as the justice

      Ted Cruz seeks to move on from Tucker Carlson mauling
      The most Washington website of all was forced to issue a diplomatic correction on Saturday, in a second recent iteration of perhaps the most Washington story of all: mistaken reporting about diners at Le Diplomate, a restaurant popular with DC politicos.‘When QAnon and the Tea Party have a baby’: Ron Johnson will run again for US SenateRead moreThe website in question was Politico, the capital and Capitol-covering tipsheet which with characteristic capitals informed readers of its Playbook email: “SPOTTED: Speaker NANCY PELOSI, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Sen[ators] AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn) and DICK DURBIN (D-Ill) and Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR dining together at Le Diplomate on Friday night.”The email also offered readers a “pic from our intrepid tipster”.Alas, it did not show Sotomayor.The “pic” showed French café tables, waiters, diners and a woman turning from her dessert to talk to Klobuchar, who was maskless and sitting opposite a masked-up Durbin. Schumer’s distinctive hairline could be seen next to Durbin and Pelosi could be seen, also maskless, to the right of a dark-haired woman with her back turned: supposedly the supreme court justice.Politico might have paused before pressing send. Not only could the supposed Sotomayor’s face not be seen but only last month another supposed scandal at “Le Dip” proved to be a “le flop”.Then, a former Republican aide tweeted that Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, had been turned away.In fact, they were being seated outside. Politico covered the slip, reporting: “Within minutes we at Playbook were looped into this seemingly momentous news and were pretty excited ourselves to write about it today. Alas, our enthusiasm was dashed when we heard back from a Buttigieg spox who said there was nothing to it.”On Friday, a Sotomayor sighting would have been news. One of three liberal justices on the supreme court, she had not appeared in person for oral arguments earlier, over Joe Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate for private employers.Furthermore, in that hearing she had made an inaccurate claim about the Omicron-fuelled Covid-19 surge, saying: “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”As the Washington Post fact-checker put it, that was “wildly incorrect”, as “according to HHS data, as of 8 January there are about 5,000 children hospitalised … either with suspected Covid or a confirmed laboratory test”.The Politico photo also came amid continuing speculation about when or if another liberal, Stephen Breyer, might retire, thereby giving Joe Biden a pick for the court before possible loss of the Senate. Schumer would shepherd any nominee into place.Alas for Politico, it soon became clear its tipster was wrong. The woman in the picture was Iris Weinshall, the chief operating officer of the New York Public Library, who is married to Schumer. A correction ensued but to make matters worse, Weinshall was initially identified only by her husband’s name. To make matters worse still, Schumer’s office told other outlets that unlike in le grande affaire de Buttigieg, Politico had not called to check on the tip from “Le Dip”.Politico acknowledged the slip and said standards had not been met.“We deeply regret the error,” it said.TopicsWashington DCUS politicsSonia SotomayorUS supreme courtChuck SchumerNancy PelosiAmy KlobucharnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel in race against time as Trump allies seek to run out clock

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      Capitol attack panel in race against time as Trump allies seek to run out clock A barrage of delay tactics as Republicans are expected to do well in 2022 midterms that would give them control to shut down inquiryThe House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol is facing a race against time in 2022 as Trump and his allies seek to run out the clock with a barrage of delay tactics and lawsuits.Bannon and allies bid to expand pro-Trump influence in local US politicsRead moreRepublicans are widely expected to do well in this year’s midterm elections in November and, if they win control of the House, that would give them control to shut down the investigation that has proved politically and legally damaging to Trump and Republicans.The select committee opened its investigative efforts into the 6 January insurrection, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win, with a flurry of subpoenas to Trump officials to expedite the evidence-gathering process.But aside from securing a trove of documents from Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the select committee has found itself wading through molasses with Trump and other top administration aides seeking to delay the investigation by any means possible.The former US president has attempted to block the select committee at every turn, instructing aides to defy subpoenas from the outset and, most recently, launching a last-ditch appeal to the supreme court to prevent the release of the most sensitive of White House records.His aides are following Trump in lockstep as they attempt to shield themselves from the investigation, doing everything from filing frivolous lawsuits to stop the select committee obtaining call records to invoking the fifth amendment so as to not respond in depositions.The efforts amount to a cynical ploy by Republicans to run out the clock until the midterms and use the election calendar to characterize the interim report, which the bipartisan select committee hopes to issue by the summer, as a political exercise to damage the GOP.The select committee, sources close to the investigation say, is therefore hoping for a breakthrough with the supreme court, which experts believe will ensure the panel can access the Trump White House records over the former president’s objections about executive privilege.“I think the supreme court is very unlikely to side with Trump, and part of it is the nature of executive privilege – it’s a power belonging to the President,” said Jonathan Shaub, a former DoJ office of legal counsel attorney and law professor at the University of Kentucky.“It’s hard to see how a former president could exercise constitutional power under a theory where all the constitutional powers are vested in the current president, so I think Trump is very likely to lose or the court may not take the case,” Shaub said.Members on the select committee note that several courts – the US district court and the US appeals court – have already ruled that Biden has the final say over which White House documents are subject to executive privilege, and that the panel has a legislative purpose.A victory for the select committee at the supreme court is important, members believe, not only because it would give them access to the records Trump has fought so hard to keep hidden, but because it would supercharge the inquiry with crucial momentum.The select committee got its first break when House investigators obtained from Meadows thousands of communications involving the White House, including a powerpoint detailing ways to stage a coup, and are hoping the supreme court can help to sustain their pace.“It’s pretty clear that these documents are serious documents that shed light on the president’s activities on January 6 and that may be quite damaging for Trump,” said Kate Shaw, a former Obama White House counsel and now a professor at the Cardozo School of Law.“They could make a difference to the record being compiled by the committee and thus they could give the process additional momentum,” Shaw said. “That’s probably why Trump is resisting their release as hard as he is.”More generally, the select committee says they are unconcerned by attempts by Trump aides and political operatives to stymie the inquiry, since Democrats control Washington and the panel has an unprecedented carte blanche to upturn every inch the Trump administration.“The legislative and executive branches are completely in agreement with each other, that this material is not privileged and needs to be turned over to Congress,” said congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the select committee. “Things have been moving much more quickly.”But the select committee acknowledges privately that they face a longer and more difficult slog with Trump aides and political operatives who are mounting legal challenges to everything from the panel’s attempts to compel production of call records and even testimony.The trouble for the select committee, regardless of Democrats’ controlling the White House, Congress and the justice department, is that they are counting on the courts to deliver accountability for Trump officials unwilling to cooperate with the inquiry.Yet Trump and his officials know that slow-moving cogs of justice have a history of doing nothing of the sort. House investigators only heard from former Trump White House counsel Don McGahn this past summer, years after the end of the special counsel investigation.The House has not even been able to obtain Trump’s tax returns – something Democrats have been fighting to get access to since they took the majority in 2018 – after repeated appeals from the former president despite repeated defeats in court.Trump and his aides insist they are not engaged in a ploy to stymie the investigation, though they admit to doing just that in private discussions, according to sources close to the former president.When the select committee issued its first subpoenas to his former aides Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Steve Bannon and Kash Patel, Trump’s lawyers told their lawyers to defy the orders because it would likely serve to slow down the investigation, the sources said.The result of Trump’s directive – first reported by the Guardian – is that Bannon and Meadows refused to appear for their depositions, and the select committee now may never hear their inside information about the Capitol attack after they were held in contempt of Congress.It remains possible that Bannon and Meadows seek some kind of a plea deal with federal prosecutors that involves providing testimony to the select committee in exchange for no jail time, but the court hearing for Bannon, for instance, is scheduled late into the summer.The reality for House investigators is that the cases are now in the hands of a justice department intent on proving it remains above the political fray after years of Trump’s interference at DoJ, and therefore indifferent to the time crunch felt by the 6 January committee.The situation for the select committee may be even trickier with Republican members of Congress involved in 6 January, as they just need to stonewall the investigation only through the midterms, before which the panel hopes to release an interim report into their findings.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on the outlook for the investigation and their expectations for the supreme court hearing in the case against Trump, which the panel, cognizant of their limited timeframe, has asked to expedite.Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, originally aimed to have the final report completed before the midterm elections, but the efforts by the most senior Trump officials to delay the investigation means he could need until the end of the year.Either way, sources close to the investigation told the Guardian, the select committee is hoping that the supreme court will deliver the elusive Trump White House records – and that it could pave the way for the investigation to shift into yet another higher gear.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

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      Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

      How dismantling Roe v Wade would threaten other rights
      Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.“Sarah Weddington died this morning after a series of health issues,” Hays wrote. “With Linda Coffee, she filed the first case of her legal career, Roe v Wade, fresh out of law school. She was my professor … the best writing instructor I ever had, and a great mentor.“At 27 she argued Roe to [the supreme court] (a fact that always made me feel like a gross underachiever). Ironically, she worked on the case because law firms would not hire women in the early 70s, leaving her with lots of time for good trouble.”The court ruled on Roe v Wade in 1973. Nearly 50 years later the right it established is under threat from a supreme court packed with hardline conservatives, in part thanks to a Texas law that drastically restricts access and offers incentives for reporting women to authorities.In 2017, speaking to the Guardian, Weddington predicted such a turn of events. “If [Neil] Gorsuch’s nomination is approved, will abortion be illegal the next day? No. One new judge won’t necessarily make much difference. But two or three might.”After steering Gorsuch on to the court – and a seat held open by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when Barack Obama was president – Donald Trump installed Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Barrett replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights.Weddington found her way to Roe v Wade soon after graduating from law school at the University of Texas. Represented by Weddington and Coffee, Norma McCorvey became the plaintiff known as “Jane Roe” in Roe v Wade. McCorvey became an evangelical Christian and opponent of abortion. She died in 2017.In her Guardian interview, Weddington discussed arguing the case in federal court. “I was very nervous,” she said. “It was like going down a street with no street lights. But there was no other way to go and I didn’t have any preconceived notions that I would not win.”She won, but the case continued.“Henry Wade, the district attorney, unwittingly helped us,” she said. “At a press conference, he said, ‘I don’t care what any court says; I am going to continue to prosecute doctors who carry out abortion.’ There was a procedural rule that said if local elected officials continue to prosecute after a federal court had declared a law unconstitutional, there would be a right to appeal to the supreme court.”‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical angerRead moreBefore the court in Washington, Weddington said: “It was impossible to read the justices’ faces. The attorney on the other side started by saying something inappropriate about arguing a case against a beautiful woman. He thought the judges would snicker. But their faces didn’t change a bit.“I had to argue it twice in the supreme court: in 1971 and again in 1972. On 22 January 1973 I was at the Texas legislature when the phone rang. It was a reporter from the New York Times. ‘Does Miss Weddington have a comment today about Roe v Wade?’ my assistant was asked. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Should she?’“It was beginning to be very exciting. Then we got a telegram from the supreme court saying that I had won 7-2 and that they were going to air-mail a copy of the ruling. Nowadays, of course, you’d just go online.“I was ecstatic, and more than 44 years later we’re still talking about it.”Weddington later revealed that she had an abortion herself, in 1967. “Just before the anaesthesia hit,” she said, “I thought: ‘I hope no one ever knows about this.’ For a lot of years, that was exactly the way I felt. Now there’s a major push to encourage women to tell their stories so people will realise that it is not a shameful thing. One out of every five women will have an abortion.”Weddington predicted: “Whatever else I do in my life, the headline on my obituary is always going to be ‘Roe v Wade attorney dies’.”In fact she achieved much more, as Hays detailed in her tweets on Sunday. “Those career doors shut to her led her to run for office, getting elected as the first woman from Travis county in the [Texas legislature] in 1972 (along with four other women elected to the House: Kay Bailey, Chris Miller, Betty Andujar and Senfronia Thompson).“She was general counsel of the United States Department of Agriculture under [Jimmy] Carter and enjoyed her stint in DC. Federal judicial nominations for Texas were run by her as a high-ranking Texan in the administration.“A Dallas lawyer she knew sought a bench. She had interviewed with him while at UT law. He’d asked her, ‘What will we tell our wives if we hire you?’ She told him he was wasting their time and hers and walked out of the interview. He did not get the judgeship.“Ever the proper preacher’s daughter, she would never tell me who the lawyer was. People don’t know that about Sarah. She was such a proper Methodist minister’s daughter. One of the few people I couldn’t cuss in front of.”Hays also paid tribute to Weddington as a teacher and a member of a “Great Austin Matriarchy” that also included the former Texas governor Ann Richards and the columnist Molly Ivins.In her Guardian interview, Weddington indicated she was at peace with being remembered for Roe v Wade. “I think most women of my generation can recall our feelings about the fight,” she said. “It’s like young love. You may not feel exactly the same, but you remember it.”TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsUS healthcareUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Trump asks supreme court to block release of 6 January records

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      Trump asks supreme court to block release of 6 January recordsAn appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago but prohibited documents from being turned over Donald Trump turned to the supreme court Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol.A federal appeals court ruled against the former US president two weeks ago, but prohibited documents held by the National Archives from being turned over before the supreme court had a chance to weigh in. Trump appointed three of the nine justices.Michael Flynn sues Capitol attack committee in bid to block subpoenaRead moreTrump is claiming that as a former president he has right to assert executive privilege over the records, arguing that releasing them would damage the presidency in the future.But Joe Biden determined that the documents were in the public interest and that executive privilege should therefore not be invoked.The documents include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft executive order on the topic of election integrity”, the Archives has said.The House committee has said the records are vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot that was aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      The supreme court’s abortion ruling is even more unsettling than it may seem | Moira Donegan

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      The supreme court’s abortion ruling is even more unsettling than it may seemMoira DoneganIn allowing Texas’s outrageous abortion ban to stay in place, the court signaled that it is willing to sacrifice its own legitimacy and power in order to destroy Roe Don’t be fooled by the supreme court’s nominal hedging on its endorsement of SB8, the Texas abortion ban that deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who assists in an abortion after six weeks’ gestation. In a ruling on Friday, the court held that a lawsuit by Texas abortion providers could go forward – but only on narrow grounds. Only those state officials responsible for licensing medical providers may be sued, the court ordered – no one else involved in the state’s practical maintenance of SB8 is liable. The ruling said, for instance, that the providers could not sue court clerks, those bureaucrats tasked with actually docketing the lawsuits that would enforce SB8.For providers, it seems that the best possible outcome for the suit now is that they may be able to secure an injunction preventing medical providers from being delicensed. These perplexing limits placed by the court on which parties can be sued to challenge SB8 ensures that though the suit against the law will be at least partly allowed to go forward, it will be largely toothless.In the meantime, SB8 will remain law. Women in Texas are effectively banned from securing a legal abortion in the state, even though the still-standing Roe v Wade decision says that they have a right to one. It’s likely that SB8 will remain in effect at least for the duration of Roe’s lifetime – meaning that Texas women will not be able to obtain legal abortions after six weeks for the foreseeable future. Many of the initial media responses to the court’s opinion emphasized that since the suit was allowed to go forward, on technical grounds, the ruling was a narrow win for the abortion providers. But in reality Friday was a massive win for the rightwing Texas government, and for anti-choice forces nationwide.That SB8 has been allowed to take effect – now for the second time – by the supreme court reflects the justices’ eagerness to gut abortion rights. The fact of the matter is that the court is already set to overturn Roe and allow states to ban abortion outright. That much was clear to anyone who listened to last week’s oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, a case surrounding the constitutionality of a 15-week ban in Mississippi, which devolved into grim misogynist spectacle as the Republican appointees held court on the supposed ease of giving infants up for adoption and their own robust comfort with overturning long-settled precedent.That ruling is scheduled to come down in late May or early June. When it does, a slim majority of states are expected to ban abortion, either immediately or very soon thereafter. That means that soon SB8 – and the copycat bills that it has inspired in states like Florida and Arkansas – won’t be necessary for the anti-choice lobby to achieve their aims. Instead of concocting an elaborate enforcement process in which rogue anti-woman vigilantes enforce their abortion bans, the states will be able to enforce their bans themselves.SB8, then, and the supreme court’s embrace of it, can be understood not only as a harbinger of the justices’ deep contempt for the abortion right, but also of their childish impatience to exert this contempt upon American women. They can’t even wait six months. They want to ban abortion right now. In pursuit of this goal, the supreme court has proven itself willing to undermine its own capacity to oversee state laws, to enforce federal supremacy, and to protect constitutional rights.The anti-choice substance of the court’s decision in SB8 was not surprising; its embrace of Texas’s tactics perhaps was. Aside from its direct attempt to undermine women’s rights, SB8 also took aim at judicial authority. By banning abortion long before viability, the law flouted the supreme court’s precedents in Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey. But that much a slew of vehemently anti-choice justices would probably forgive: all six of the Republican appointees clearly believe that Roe was wrongly decided, and at least five of them (all but Roberts, who seems more trepidatious) appear eager to overturn it. But in its novel enforcement mechanism, SB8 sought specifically to evade judicial review – not just to give the court an opportunity to overturn its own precedent, but to make it so that within Texas borders supreme court precedent didn’t matter.In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared SB8 to the views of John C Calhoun – a nineteenth-century pro-slavery campaigner who argued that states have the right to nullify federal laws that they do not like. America fought its civil war in no small part over this question. By first allowing the SB8 to go into effect, in September, and then by gutting the lawsuit against it this Friday, the supreme court has, shockingly, endorsed a scheme to undermine its own power, and granted a state the ability to evade federal precedent. Nullification, it seems, is back in style.For years, court watchers have wondered whether the justices’ institutionalist instincts would overcome their misogynist ones: if the Court had to choose between maintaining its own power and legitimacy, and overturning Roe, which would it choose? Now, it seems, we have our answer.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)AbortioncommentReuse this content More

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      How dismantling Roe v Wade could imperil other ‘core, basic human rights’

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      How dismantling Roe v Wade could imperil other ‘core, basic human rights’Supreme court appears inclined to severely curtail or overturn Roe v Wade after hearing Mississippi case, which could have affect gay rights, contraceptives and fertility treatments Constitutional scholars in the US said a litany of rights, from same-sex marriage and sex to birth control and in vitro fertilization, could come into question if the country’s highest court moves to overrule or weaken Roe v Wade.The supreme court last week heard arguments in the case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which centers on whether the state of Mississippi can ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation, roughly nine weeks before bans are permitted under current law.The Mississippi case is widely regarded as the most important abortion rights case since Roe v Wade, when the supreme court effectively legalized abortion nationally in 1973. A decision in the Dobbs case is expected June 2022.Although supreme court opinions are notoriously difficult to predict, a majority of justices on the conservative-leaning court appeared inclined to severely curtail or overturn Roe v Wade, which protects abortion rights in states hostile to the procedure.Legal scholars warned that the impacts of such a move would likely be widespread, because abortion rights are rooted in the same implied constitutional right to privacy that is the foundation for other intimate personal decisions Americans now take for granted.Gay rights, contraceptives, certain fertility treatments and even interracial marriage, “are imperiled because they’re all rooted in that right to privacy,” Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University law school and an expert in constitutional, family and reproductive rights law, told the Guardian.“All of this has been implied because they’re understood to be core, basic human rights,” said Murray. “You don’t need the state to recognize them because they are vested in you by virtue of being a human.”Currently, states are prevented from banning abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb, a concept known as “viability”. But at the hearing on 1 December, a majority of justices appeared ready to uphold Mississippi’s law, which would require either invalidating the “viability” standard or overturn Roe v Wade entirely.In arguments, justices pointed to several ways they may reinterpret the Roe v Wade decision. Some, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, were skeptical there is a right to privacy and were swayed by the lack of an explicit reference to the right in the constitution, a concept known as “textualism”.“If we were talking about the second amendment, I know exactly what we’re talking about,” said Thomas. “If we’re talking about the fourth amendment, I know what we’re talking about because it’s written. It’s there.”That argument could be paired with one pushed forward by conservatives, such as Mississippi solicitor general Scott Stewart, who argued a right to abortion is not grounded in the “history or tradition” of the country.“A right to abortion [is] not grounded in the text,” said Stewart. “It’s grounded on abstract concepts that this court has rejected in other contexts as supplying a substantive right”.The theory underlying that right to privacy is called “substantive due process”, or the doctrine that the constitution protects both the procedures of due process, such as how criminal law is applied, and “substantive” guarantees of life, liberty and property.“If you ask where rights come from in the US constitution there’s basically two general answers,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University and a historian who has studied abortion rights since Roe v Wade. “There’s the rights spelled out in the text of the constitution,” such as rights to bear arms or against unreasonable search and seizure, “and there’s other rights, like the right to marry and the right to parent that are not in the text of the constitution”.Those are rights established by substantive due process. For example, in 1965 the court struck down birth control bans for married couples in Griswold v Connecticut. In 1967 with Loving v Virginia, the court invalidated anti-miscegenation laws that barred interracial marriage. In 1972 in Eisenstadt v Baird, the court found people who were not married also had a right to birth control. In 1973, the court recognized a right to terminate a pregnancy.“These rights of parental autonomy are underpinnings of the right to privacy, marriage is included in this,” said Murray. “In a later case, the state says marriage [and] procreation are basic civil rights of man.”Cases based in substantive due process continued into the modern era, when in 2003 the court invalidated anti-sodomy statutes in Lawrence v Texas, and established a right to same-sex conduct. In 2016, the court found same-sex couples also had a right to marry in Obergefell v Hodges.Attorneys for Jackson Women’s Health Organization responded on the principle of substantive due process when quizzed on this principle by Thomas.“If I were to ask you what constitutional right protects the right to abortion, is it privacy? Is it autonomy? What would it be?” asked Thomas.“It’s liberty, Your Honor,” said Julie Rikelman, litigation director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represented the abortion clinic.Briefs to the court in Dobbs directly challenge that principle, such as from the conservative, anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life. Attorneys for the group, the conservative legal activists Adam Mortara and Jonathan Mitchell, argued the court does not necessarily need to overturn decisions protecting gay rights.“But neither should the court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread,” wrote Mortara and Mitchell. “Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe.” The same brief argued women could control their reproduction by refraining from sex. Neither Mitchell nor Mortara responded to an interview request.Until the supreme court issues a decision, it is unclear exactly how rights protected by substantive due process might be affected. However, scholars consider same-sex and reproductive rights to be the most vulnerable because there is an active political campaign to circumscribe them. By contrast, there is little contemporary criticism of interracial marriage.If Roe v Wade is overruled, “It will be on the ground it was a right that was untethered from constitutional text,” said Murray. If that view prevails on the court, rights to contraception, gay rights and in vitro fertilization could also be quickly implicated, since, “all of these things are untethered from constitutional text and historically were not available in the US”.What’s more, the history of abortion rights may provide a roadmap for other rights to be hobbled, even if substantive due process prevails.Murray offered the example of a 2017 case, in which three conservative justices, led by justice Neil Gorsuch, argued states could restrict birth certificates of same-sex parents. Gorsuch argued there appeared to be nothing unconstitutional about a “biology-based birth registration regime” where only one same-sex parent would be listed on the certificate.“It is a really good example of how they have dismantled Roe piecemeal and incrementally could be applied to these other rights,” said Murray.TopicsRoe v WadeUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsAbortionfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Sotomayor decries abortion ruling but court’s conservatives show their muscle

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      Sotomayor decries abortion ruling but court’s conservatives show their muscleThe highest court in the US has been defied by a group of extremist Republicans openly flouting the court’s own rulings Sonia Sotomayor, the liberal-leaning justice on the US supreme court, put it plainly. For almost three months, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature of Texas had “substantially suspended a constitutional guarantee: a pregnant woman’s right to control her own body”.“The court should have put an end to this madness months ago,” Sotomayor said.But when the supreme court issued on Friday its majority opinion on SB8, the extreme Texas law that bans abortions effectively at six weeks, in blatant violation of the court’s own constitutional rulings, it still didn’t put an end to the madness.Biden ‘concerned’ over supreme court’s Texas abortion ruling, says White House – liveRead moreIt allowed the law, the most restrictive currently in force in the US, to remain in effect.And by varying margins, the new conservative supermajority of the court, consolidated by Donald Trump’s appointment of three new rightwing justices, restricted the legal route by which abortion providers could challenge the law.From now on the legal battle would have to be focused narrowly on just four state employees responsible for medical licensing in the state. Other Texas officials involved, notably the state’s attorney general Ken Paxton and clerks in state courts, would be let off the hook.Even more provocatively, while the court sent the abortion fight back to a federal district court in Austin, it let the ban itself stand. That adds insult to injury given the supreme court’s much-criticised refusal to stay the ban at the start, not to mention the many weeks it has taken to hand down its decision.Over those weeks, Texas women have paid a heavy price. “The court’s delay in allowing this case to proceed has had catastrophic consequences for women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion in Texas,” Sotomayor said in a powerful dissenting opinion.In September alone, the first month of the ban, the number of legal abortions performed in Texas plummeted to about half the level a year ago. That was the largest recorded decline in the state’s recent history, with untold numbers of women forced to seek abortions out of state or carry unwanted pregnancies to term.Sotomayor, who is emerging as a pivotal voice of resistance within the post-Trump court, was forthright in her choice of words. Her disagreement with the conservative justices went far beyond a “quibble” over which state officials abortion providers can sue, she said.The question was: is the supreme court prepared to stand up in the name of constitutional rights to the cynical antics of ideologically driven Republicans in states such as Texas?“The choice to shrink from Texas’s challenge to federal supremacy will have far-reaching repercussions,” Sotomayor warned. “I doubt the court, let alone the country, is prepared for them.”Nobody can doubt that SB 8 is a flagrant violation of the constitutional right to an abortion enshrined in the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v Wade. While Roe sets the bar of fetal viability at about 24 weeks, Texas now puts it at the point of earliest cardiac activity, around six weeks – before many women even know they are pregnant.Neil Gorsuch, one of the three Trump appointees, who wrote Friday’s majority opinion, said that the issue of the constitutional right to an abortion was not under consideration in this case. The matter at hand in the Texas law was whether abortion providers could press on with their challenge to the ban by suing specific state officials.That will do little to assuage the jitters of 80% of Americans who think that abortions should be legal in all or certain circumstances. In a separate case before the supreme court based on a new Mississippi ban at 15 weeks, which is now blocked by a lower court, Roe v Wade is very much up for grabs, and the signs are ominous.In oral arguments in the Mississippi case less than two weeks ago, several of the conservative justices indicated they were willing to sharply restrict or even overturn the right to an abortion despite its rock-steady standing as a pillar of constitutional law for almost 50 years.Nor does Gorsuch’s protestation that Friday’s case was merely focused on procedural matters offer much comfort. SB 8 was devised by Texas Republicans as a juridical trick to skirt around constitutional protections by making it more difficult for abortion providers to challenge the law in federal court.At the heart of the legislation is a ruse designed to make a mockery of federal oversight. Enforcement of the abortion ban is transferred from state officials who are vulnerable to federal challenge to private individuals, armed with financial inducements of up to $10,000 to cover legal fees.Supreme court rules Texas abortion providers can sue over ban but won’t stop lawRead more“SB 8 is structured to thwart review and result in ‘a denial of any hearing’,” Sotomayor decried. “The events of the last three months have shown that the law has succeeded in its endeavor.”That is why the vote of the court’s new post-Trump majority to issue such a narrow opinion over SB 8 is more than a “quibble”. The highest court in the nation has been defied by a group of extremist Republicans openly flouting the court’s own rulings.In response, the conservative majority emboldened by Trump has opted not to insist on respect for the constitutional law of the land, but instead to blithely play along.As Sotomayor put it: “By so doing, the court leaves all manner of constitutional rights more vulnerable than ever before, to the great detriment of our constitution and our republic.”Perhaps most tellingly, the idea of appeasing Texas Republicans in their attempt to undermine the supreme court’s own precedents proved too much even for John Roberts, the chief justice.In important aspects of Friday’s decision, he broke with his five fellow conservative justices and sided pointedly with Sotomayor and the liberal minority.“The clear purpose and actual effect of SB 8 has been to nullify this court’s rulings,” Roberts said, in words which may reverberate down the years.“The role of the supreme court in our constitutional system is at stake.”TopicsUS newsTexasAbortionUS politicsUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans confident supreme court will overturn abortion rights

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      Republicans confident supreme court will overturn abortion rightsMississippi governor Tate Reeves says state ‘snap-back’ legislation will ban almost all abortion if Roe v Wade is thrown out entirely

      Opinion: the supreme court is coming for women’s rights
      As the supreme court weighs the future of abortion access in America, Republicans on Sunday expressed confidence that the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision would soon be overturned, paving the way for a raft of anti-abortion legislation around the country next year.‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical angerRead moreOn Wednesday, the supreme court heard arguments over a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Observers suggested that the conservative supermajority on the court appeared poised to uphold the law and potentially go further by overturning Roe, which protects a woman’s right to choose. A decision is not expected until June next year.Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, told CNN’s State of the Union he had “some reason for optimism” after this week’s arguments.He also confirmed that if the landmark ruling was overturned entirely, Mississippi would enforce a ban on almost all abortions in the state under a so-called “trigger law”.“That is a yes,” Reeves said when asked if he would enforce the “snap-back” legislation.“Because if you believe as I believe very strongly that that innocent, unborn child in the mother’s womb is in fact a child, the most important word when we talk about unborn children is not unborn, but it’s children.”The position is not representative of the majority of Americans. According to recent polling, seven in 10 are opposed to overturning Roe v Wade while 59% believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances.Nonetheless, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a global research and policy organisation “committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights”, 21 US states are certain to attempt some form of ban on abortion should Roe be overturned, using laws already on the books.Reeves caveated his answer by cautioning that Mississippi’s response to the forthcoming supreme court ruling would be “dependent upon how the court rules and exactly what those opinions allow us to do”. He also noted that any decision would not lead to a national ban but could permit states to make their own determinations.Mike Braun, a Republican senator for Indiana, echoed a number of Reeves’ arguments. He told NBC’s Meet the Press he wanted “abortions to be eliminated from the landscape” but would not be drawn into specifics regarding potential laws in his state.Indiana has enacted 55 abortion restrictions and bans in the past decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, but does not have a “trigger law” or equivalent on the books. It is listed by the institute as one of five states without these laws that are still likely to move towards almost total bans should Roe be overturned.“When it comes to things like abortion, I think it’s clear it’s time to turn it back to the states,” Braun told NBC.Since former president Donald Trump installed three conservative justices to the supreme court in just four years, both sides of the fight over abortion rights have been preparing for a legal showdown.According to the Associated Press, campaign finance data reveals that pro-abortion-access groups donated $8m in 2018 and more than $10m in 2020.Those numbers outpace the public contributions of anti-abortion groups, which donated $2.6m in 2018 and $6.3m in 2020, according to data. But the complexity of the network of nonprofits and “dark money” funds makes it difficult to produce a full accounting of the money flows.TopicsRepublicansMississippiUS supreme courtAbortionUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US healthcarenewsReuse this content More