The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said a narrowly tailored challenge to Texas' near-total ban on abortions, SB8, could proceed in federal courts but declined for a second time to put the law on hold.
The decision, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, all but foreclosed hope for a sweeping federal court order halting SB8 enforcement in Texas, abortion rights advocates said.
"The threat of bounty-hunting suits will continue," said Julie Murray, an attorney with Planned Parenthood, a leading abortion provider.
SB8 outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and, in an unprecedented enforcement arrangement, deputizes everyday citizens to sue anyone who "aids or abets" an unlawful abortion in order to collect at least $10,000 in bounty.
The law has been in effect for more than 100 days, denying access to abortion care for thousands of women in the nation's second most populous state despite 50 years of Supreme Court precedent protecting the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability.
"If you can avoid the enforcement of abortion rights by saying simply, 'private citizens do the enforcing, state officials don't,' there's no saying that that's going to stop with abortion rights," said Florida State University law professor and abortion law historian Mary Ziegler. "The court really didn't do much in this ruling at all to shut down that possibility."
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