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WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: SCOTUS Is Set To Hear A Potentially Huge Abortion Case

On Friday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a  constitutional attorney  by training,  joined  “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on ...

On Friday, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training, joined “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network to discuss the news that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take an important abortion case out of Louisiana: June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee. Last February, Hammer castigated Chief Justice Roberts for joining the Court’s liberal bloc to temporarily enjoin enforcement of the underlying Louisiana pro-life statute, which requires abortionists to maintain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic. Hammer has also previously reported on the potentially huge ramifications of a “third-party standing” legal challenge that Louisiana has made about abortion litigation more broadly. In Gee, the Court will hear arguments on both the merits of the underlying law and Louisiana’s “third-party standing” challenge.
Wheeler began by noting that, while she was happy to see the Supreme Court take the case, she was skeptical that pro-lifers could expect any kind of doctrinally or constitutionally meaningful outcome. She specifically expressed skepticism about both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — each of whom Hammer has also been skeptical of in Daily Wire op-eds.
Hammer responded by agreeing with Wheeler’s concerns and ultimately predicting that the likeliest outcome in Gee is a narrow ruling that affirms the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to uphold Louisiana’s pro-life statute but perhaps only narrowly pares back the “undue burden” constitutional law standard for abortion regulation that was adopted by the Court in the infamous 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey:
You’re right to point out how Roberts seemed to flip from [his dissenting vote in the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court case of Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt] to his siding with the liberals to grant the stay [in Gee] back in February. … I wrote a column for The Daily Wire just ripping John Roberts for this … [and] to be honest with you, … he frankly deserved it.
Kavanaugh, now, he wrote separately. When you just dissent from this sort of decree, you don’t have to write anything, you can just dissent. Kavanaugh wrote separately [at the time] — he wrote like a three-and-a-half to four page dissent. It was very weird — you’re right to flag it, it was kind of wishy-washy. A lot of conservatives were like, what’s going on here — he seems to be trying to find a cute way out. So that was a red flag in and of itself.
My best guess here is that they probably will find a way to uphold the Fifth Circuit ruling … but they’re going to [do so] on very, very narrow ground. I wouldn’t expect this to be like a landmark decision or anything like that. Roberts and Kavanaugh will find a way to preserve what they view as the “institutional integrity” of the Court, but they’ll uphold the Fifth Circuit.
Hammer reiterated that prediction — while additionally predicting that Louisiana’s challenge to “third-party standing” for abortionists would unfortunately fail — in his Monday Daily Wire column previewing the 2019-2010 Supreme Court term: “Kavanaugh and Chief Justice Roberts write a plurality opinion that upholds Louisiana’s law while very narrowly paring back Casey‘s ‘undue burden’ standard. But the chief justice joins liberals to secure continued liberal standing requirements for abortionists.”


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