Facts
- Mississippi enacted the 2018 Gestational Age Act, prohibiting most abortions after 15 weeks’ gestational age, with exceptions for medical emergency and severe fetal abnormality.
- Jackson Women’s Health Organization (the state’s only licensed abortion clinic at the time) and a physician sued state officials to block enforcement, arguing the law violated existing constitutional limits on pre-viability abortion restrictions.
- The federal district court permanently enjoined the Act, concluding that a pre-viability ban was unconstitutional under then-governing Supreme Court precedent.
- The Fifth Circuit affirmed on the same ground.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether the Constitution forbids state bans on elective abortion before fetal viability.
Issues
- Whether the Fourteenth Amendment protects a right to obtain an abortion such that states may not prohibit elective abortions before fetal viability.
- Whether prior decisions recognizing and applying a constitutional abortion right should be retained under stare decisis.
- If no fundamental abortion right exists, what standard of review applies to state abortion regulations, and whether Mississippi’s 15-week ban satisfies it.
Decision
- The Court upheld Mississippi’s 15-week abortion restriction.
- The Court held the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and overruled Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
- The Court rejected the viability line and the undue-burden framework as constitutional requirements.
- The Court applied rational-basis review and concluded Mississippi could reasonably regulate abortion to further legitimate state interests.
- Chief Justice Roberts concurred in the judgment, agreeing the law could be upheld but rejecting the need to overrule Roe and Casey in full.
- Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented, arguing the Court improperly abandoned precedent and discounted reliance interests.
Legal Principles
- Unenumerated substantive due process rights are protected only if they are deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.
- Abortion is not a constitutionally protected right under that test; states may regulate or prohibit abortion subject to rational-basis review.
- Under rational-basis review, abortion regulations are valid if a legislature could rationally believe the law serves legitimate interests, including protecting prenatal life and maternal health.
- Stare decisis does not require retaining precedents deemed egregiously wrong, unworkable, and insufficiently grounded in constitutional text, history, and precedent, particularly where recognized reliance interests are not of the sort traditionally treated as controlling.
- The majority stated its abortion holding should not be understood to cast doubt on precedents not involving abortion.
Conclusion
The Court upheld Mississippi’s pre-viability abortion ban, held that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion, overruled Roe and Casey, and returned primary authority over abortion regulation to state political processes subject to rational-basis review.