Sotomayor's Defiant Dissent

[Nevilledog]

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Rebecca Traister
@rtraister
The @thenation ran Justice Sotomayor’s full dissent as its own piece and you should read every urgent word of it:

Sotomayor’s Defiant Dissent
In her blistering dissent, the Supreme Court justice calls out her conservative colleagues’ breathtaking disregard of precedent and the Constitution.
thenation.com
5:04 AM · Sep 4, 2021

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/sotomayor-abortion-dissent/

Conservatives would have you believe that the Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas’s law banning abortions after six weeks, and deputizing bounty hunters to enforce it, was a narrow and technical ruling from the high court. It was not. It was a frontal attack on the constitutional rights of women, made all the more despicable by the conservative decision to authorize the Texas attack on women without the benefit of a full, public hearing on the issues. In dissent, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor called out her conservative colleagues for all of it: their “breathtaking defiance” of constitutional order, their stunning rejection of precedent, and their flaming cowardice.

She could not stop them, but for posterity and future generations, she placed on the record an account of their shame. —Elie Mystal

The Court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand. Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the Court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the State’s own invention. Because the Court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent.

In May 2021, the Texas Legislature enacted S. B. 8 (the Act). The Act, which took effect statewide at midnight on September 1, makes it unlawful for physicians to perform abortions if they either detect cardiac activity in an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect such activity. This equates to a near-categorical ban on abortions beginning six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, before many women realize they are pregnant, and months before fetal viability. According to the applicants, who are abortion providers and advocates in Texas, the Act immediately prohibits care for at least 85% of Texas abortion patients and will force many abortion clinics to close.

*snip*

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215820712

[Bayard]

4. I like the beer in from of Kavenaugh

We need more sane voices like Justice Sotomayer. Add more judges to the Supreme Court!

[Corgigal]

2. She must think

she is working with a bunch of corrupt idiots, cause she is. Speaking of a hostile work environment.

[Hortensis]

3. Yes. Not idiots, tho. Very smart extreme-right political agents

put on the court to carry out judicial revolution, forcing far-right, Christian and wealth-dominated government and culture on a nation that would never vote for it.

Of course they have to reject precedent. Liberal principles and practices have been entrenched in constitutional law from the signing of the constitution itself all the way to today.

The Act is clearly unconstitutional under existing precedents. The respondents do not even try to argue otherwise. Nor could they: No federal appellate court has upheld such a comprehensive prohibition on abortions before viability under current law.

The Texas Legislature was well aware of this binding precedent. To circumvent it, the Legislature took the extraordinary step of enlisting private citizens to do what the State could not.