Supreme Court: Two conservative justices appear open to abortion providers being able to challenge Texas law

CNN — Two key conservative justices seemed open to arguments from abortion providers that they should be able to challenge a Texas abortion six-week ban in federal court as the Supreme Court grappled with the issue for nearly three hours on Monday. In a separate challenge, brought by the Department of Justice, however, several conservative justices did express some reservations about the breadth of the government’s arguments, with Chief Justice John Roberts calling the Biden administration’s argument “as broad as can be.” Some justices, lead by Justice Elena Kagan, suggested that the court could allow the suit brought by abortion providers to go forward and refrain from having to take action on the more complicated Justice Department case. “States are free to ask this court to reconsider its constitutional precedents, but they are not free to place themselves above this court, nullify the court’s decisions in their borders and block the judicial review necessary to vindicate federal rights.” SB 8, the law in question, bars abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat at around six weeks – often before a woman knows she is pregnant – and is in stark contrast to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision legalizing abortion nationwide prior to viability, which can occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy. He said the lawsuit should be able to go forward because the state “delegated enforcement to literally any person anywhere except for its own state officials.” But Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone said the case should not be able to proceed in federal court because the state is not the proper defendant, since SB 8 bars state officials from enforcing the law. Indiana and 19 other Republican-led states filed a brief in support of Texas, arguing that the district court that ruled in favor of the Department of Justice “threatens to expose every State in the Union to a suit by the federal Executive Branch whenever the U.S. Attorney General deems a state law to violate some constitutional right of someone, somewhere.” This story has been updated with developments Monday.