The United States Supreme Court has used its emergency docket to short-circuit litigation in cases it expects to overturn because a liberal judge has blocked a policy with which they sympathize. Sonia Sotomayor has been particularly vocal about such cases.
But now we see the pattern spreading. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has agreed to review en banc the denial of a stay. In Bristol Regional Medical Center v. Slattery, Attorney General, District Judge Bernard Friedman enjoined a Tennessee law that required a 48 hour waiting period for a woman to get an abortion. When a panel 2-1 denied a stay the dissenting circuit judge Thapar urged the defendant Tennessee to file a petition for en banc review. The Circuit granted the motion over the lone dissent of motion panel member Karen Nelson Moore.
The Circuit majority demonstrated their eagerness to restrict a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy.
Rather than wait for a panel to rule on the merits of the case, they rushed to seize the chance to declare that the injunction was improper because plaintiffs are in their opinion NOT likely to succeed on the merits. That sets up an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court which is now primed to take another whack at Planned Parenthood v. Casey, if not Roe vs. Wade.
- GWC
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