The reactionary majority of the Supreme Court today ruled that the Texas law prohibiting abortion can remain in effect during the pendency of challenges in lower courts. See Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson. The Texas law was drafted for the express purpose of evading Supreme Court precedent that recognized a fundamental constitutional right. The decision is nothing less than an affront to the authority of the Court and the supremacy of the Constitution. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his opinion dissenting from the ruling,
The clear purpose and actual effect of S. B. 8 has been to nullify this Court’s rulings. It is, however, a basic principle that the Constitution is the “fundamental and paramount law of the nation,” and “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, (1803). Indeed, “[i]f the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” United States v. Peters, 1809. The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.
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lennyesq 