Supreme Court tells lower courts to reconsider disputes on abortion and guns after blockbuster decisions
By Tierney Sneed and Ariane de Vogue, CNN
The Supreme Court on Thursday sent three abortion-related cases back down to lower courts to be reconsidered now that the court has overturned Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protections to obtain an abortion.
The move reflects the dramatically changed legal landscape around abortion after the new Supreme Court ruling, issued last week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
Two of the cases concerned measures states had passed prohibiting abortions sought solely because the fetus had been diagnosed with certain genetic abnormalities. After last week’s ruling in Dobbs, one of the states, Arkansas, enacted an outright ban on abortion.
In Arizona, the other state seeking to revive a ban on abortions sought because of genetic abnormalities, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich has vowed to revive a 1901 law criminalizing abortion and some clinics have stopped offering the procedure.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court said Friday that, in the genetic abnormalities case, a court order halting the law had been lifted.
The third case before the Supreme Court concerned an Indiana parental notification law. Like Arizona, abortion remains legal in Indiana, though the state’s Republican leaders are planning to reconvene the legislature later this summer to consider additional anti-abortion measures.
Due to lower court rulings citing the now-defunct Supreme Court precedents favoring abortion rights, Indiana has not been able to implement the 2017 law. It requires that minors who have successfully secured permission from a judge to obtain an abortion notify their parents before the abortion is performed.
The Supreme Court, having decided the term’s big Second Amendment case invalidating a New York law that restricted where people could carry a concealed weapon in public, also sent several cases they had been sitting on back to the lower courts for further deliberations.
The lower courts will look at Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion that changed the way judges should analyze gun laws, to reconsider the disputes they had previously decided.
The-CNN-Wire
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