Supreme Blunder

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court released a plurality 4-1-4 opinion siding with the lower District Court that struck down the Louisiana state law known as the “Unsafe Abortion Protection Act,” which requires doctors performing abortions to have admission privileges at a state-authorized hospital within 30 miles of the abortion center. All doctors in Louisiana at outpatient surgical facilities, except abortion centers, must have admitting privileges at a local hospital. Four Justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan) concluded that the state was barred from raising standing because they did not press that argument in the lower courts (even though the Court of Appeals ruled on standing), and that the findings of the lower District Court were not “clearly erroneous.”