It's been a busy time for court battles to do with the Texas abortion law which bans almost all abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, at around six weeks. While the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to go into effect last month, the unsigned 5-4 opinion stressed that it was on a procedural matter. Sure enough, court battles have quickly come out of the law, including from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Reports from Friday now indicate that the DOJ plans to ask the Supreme Court to block the law while these legal battles play out.
Harper Neidig's reporting for The Hill included a statement from a department spokesperson. As Neidig mentioned:
“The Justice Department intends to ask the Supreme Court to vacate the Fifth Circuit’s stay of the preliminary injunction against Texas Senate Bill 8,” Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the department, said in an emailed statement Friday.
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It's unclear whether the administration's challenge will play out the same way as the case from last month, which involved a challenge from abortion providers in Texas.
It's worth noting that Neidig, and others in the media, as well as abortion advocates, have gone out of their way to avoid mentioning the law's title, "Texas Heartbeat Act," or to mention that it is based on when an unborn child has a heartbeat. Neidig did not mention this concept at all in his reporting. Other outlets will use alternative terms, such as "cardiac activity."
As Madeline reported just earlier today, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday night upheld the decision to allow the law to go into effect. The court last week had reversed U.S. District Judge Rob Pitman's ruling which had issued an injunction against the law, with Pitman using particularly strong words against the law in his opinion. The lawsuit found its way to Judge Pitman after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a lawsuit last month.
Included in Madeline's reporting was a statement from Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. Amiri in her statement called Thursday night's decision "outrageous" and said "[t]ime and again, the Fifth Circuit has ignored the Constitution."
Amiri also mentioned that they "hope the Department of Justice urgently appeals this order to the Supreme Court to restore Texans’ ability to obtain abortion care after six weeks in pregnancy and we hope the Supreme Court will put an end to harms this law is causing."
Sure enough, that's what the department intends to do.