Biden’s DOJ formally asked SCOTUS to block the Texas heartbeat law (referred to as S.B. 8 in the document), which bans almost all abortions after a doctor can detect the heartbeat in the unborn human being.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit denied the DOJ’s emergency request to suspend the law. It issued a longer-term stay after Judge Robert Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, temporarily blocked the law.
SCOTUS already refused to halt the law on procedural grounds. The justices did this on an emergency docket.
“The question now is whether Texas’s nullification of this Court’s precedents should be allowed to continue while the courts consider the United States’ suit,” wrote the DOJ. “As the district court recognized, it should not: The United States is likely to succeed on the merits because S.B. 8 is clearly unconstitutional and because the United States has authority to seek equitable relief to protect its sovereign interest — including its interest in the supremacy of federal law and the availability of the mechanisms for judicial review that Congress and this Court have long deemed essential to protect constitutional rights.”
The DOJ claimed if SCOTUS does not act then the heartbeat law “would irreparably harm those interests and perpetuate the ongoing irreparable injury” to women in Texas seeking out abortions.
Officials did not mention the legit constitutional right to life of unborn female and male human beings. Remember, the Constitution does not mention abortion or privacy.
SCOTUS will have to review records and testimony of women affected by the law and infanticide providers. Those providers claim the law has caused them to feel “fear and instability.” They will also hear from providers in neighboring states, which claim women in Texas have flooded their clinics.
The new request asks SCOTUS to hear oral arguments unlike the first time around:
For the foregoing reasons, this Court should vacate the Fifth Circuit’s stay, put a stop to Texas’s ongoing nullification of the Court’s precedents, and restore the status quo while this litigation proceeds. In addition, the Court may construe this application as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, grant the petition, and set the case for briefing and argument this Term. Cf. Nken v. Mukasey, 555 U.S. 1042 (2008) (treating a stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment).
A writ is “meant for rare use,” but which an appellate court decides to review a case at its discretion.” Certiorari means “to be more fully informed.” SCOTUS uses certiorari to choose most of its cases. The “writ of certiorari orders a lower court to deliver its record in a case so that the high court may review it.”
The DOJ acknowledged it is asking a lot with a writ of certiorari before judgment. However, it claims the Texas law trying to stop the murder of unborn human beings justifies its request:
A petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment under 28 U.S.C. 2101(e) is an extraordinary remedy, but the issues presented by Texas’s extraordinary law are “of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this Court.” Sup. Ct. R. 11. The fundamental question presented in this case is whether States may nullify disfavored constitutional rights by purporting to disclaim their own enforcement authority and delegating enforcement of unconstitutional laws to private bounty hunters. S.B. 8’s use of that scheme has already allowed Texas to nullify this Court’s precedents for six weeks. That state of affairs should not be allowed to persist — or spread to other States or other rights — without this Court’s review.
The DOJ said SCOTUS would probably not hear its case this term without a “certiorari before judgment” because the 5th Circuit “will not hear oral argument in this case and in Whole Woman’s Health until early December.” Officials noted they do not know if the court would rule right away.
The DOJ concluded that the law is “dangerous” because God forbid states pass their own laws.
“If Texas is right, States are free to use similar schemes to nullify other precedents or suspend other constitutional rights,” whined officials.
The department wants an answer by Thursday afternoon.
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