The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked key parts of a 2013 law in Texas that had closed all but eight facilities providing abortions in America’s second most-populous state.
In an unsigned order, the justices sided with abortion rights advocates and health care providers in suspending an Oct. 2 ruling by a panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that Texas could immediately apply a rule making abortion clinics statewide spend millions of dollars on hospital-level upgrades.
The court also put on hold a separate provision of the law only as it applies to clinics in McAllen and El Paso that requires doctors at the facilities to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The admitting privileges remains in effect elsewhere in Texas.
Earlier this month, the 5th Circuit decided to hear the challenge to the Texas law and stayed a district court ruling that struck down the law. If the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened, that would have allowed Texas to enforce the law during the appeals process, which would have forced clinics to close even if the law were eventually struck down.
The 5th Circuit has yet to rule on the case, and could still uphold the Texas law, in which case the issue would either move to the U.S. Supreme Court or clinics would be shuttered, depending on whether the Supreme Court decided to hear an appeal, so the issue is far from over. But at least the clinics have a temporary reprieve. The text of the court’s order is here.
