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Demonstrators on both sides of the abortion debate quickly amassed near the Supreme Court today. | Francis Chung/E&E News/POLITICO | One sentence overturning a nearly 50-year-old constitutional protection: “Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” THE FRACTURED COURT — Roe v. Wade was decided 7-2 in 1973. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn it was decided 5-4, with the nine justices divided into four warring camps. The six conservatives were split into three distinct groups on what the decision means for other privacy rights, and the three liberals pointedly warned which faction they believed was ascendant: 1. SAMUEL ALITO, BRETT KAVANAUGH and AMY CONEY BARRETT took pains to make it clear that the Dobbs decision doesn’t affect other rights protected using the same constitutional logic of Roe. Key excerpts from the majority opinion: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such rightis implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’ … The right to abortion does not fall within this category. … “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” Read the full opinion 2. Meanwhile, CLARENCE THOMAS, who joined the majority, also wrote a concurring opinion calling explicitly for future SCOTUS decisions that attack so-called due process precedents, including, he said, protections for same-sex marriage, private sexual acts and contraception. Key excerpt from Thomas’ concurrence: “Because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion. … “[W]e should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents , including Griswold [the 1965 ruling affirming the right of married persons to obtain contraceptives], Lawrence [the 2003 ruling affirming the right for adults to engage in private, consensual sexual acts], and Obergefell [the 2015 ruling affirming the right to same-sex marriage]. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents. … “Because the Court properly applies our substantive due process precedents to reject the fabrication of a constitutional right to abortion, and because this case does not present the opportunity to reject substantive due process entirely, I join the Court’s opinion.” 3. Chief Justice JOHN ROBERTS, who has modeled himself on JOHN MARSHALL , was unable to cobble together a consensus. His lonely concurrence, writen more in sadness than in anger, set out the compromise path that was not taken: a proposal to strike down Roe’s viability standard, and thus uphold the Mississippi law, but keep Roe’s core constitutional right to an abortion. Key excerpt from Roberts’ concurrence: “[T]here is a clear path to deciding this case correctly without overruling Roe all the way down to the studs: recognize that the viability line must be discarded, as the majority rightly does, and leave for another day whether to reject any right to an abortion at all. … “The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system — regardless of how you view those cases. A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case. … “Both the Court’s opinion and the dissent display a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share. I am not sure, for example, that a ban on terminating a pregnancy from the moment of conception must be treated the same under the Constitution as a ban after fifteen weeks. … I therefore concur only in the judgment.”
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Learn how Meta is helping build the metaverse. | | | 4. STEPHEN BREYER, SONIA SOTOMAYOR and ELENA KAGAN’s withering dissent — written more in anger than in sadness — mocked the majority’s legal reasoning, scoffed at their obsession with what was on the minds of dead white men in 1868, the year the 14th Amendment was ratified, and warned that, despite the “too-much-repeated protestations” of the majority,” it was Thomas’ concurrence that was a harbinger of where the court is headed. Key excerpt from their dissent: “Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens. Yesterday, the Constitution guaranteed that a woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involves. And in thus safeguarding each woman’s reproductive freedom, the Constitution also protected “[t]he ability of women to participate equally in [this Nation’s] economic and social life.” … “But no longer. As of today, this Court holds, a State can always force a woman to give birth, prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A State can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, may be a nightmare. … “[N]o one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. … In turn, those rights led, more recently, to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. … They are all part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decision making over the most personal of life decisions. “The majority (or to be more accurate, most of it) is eager to tell us today that nothing it does ‘cast[s] doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.’ … Either the mass of the majority's opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other. … But we cannot understand how anyone can be confident that today’s opinion will be the last of its kind.” Good Friday afternoon. WHAT IT MEANS IN THE STATES … — All or nearly all abortion has now effectively been outlawed in Missouri, per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch … and Kentucky, per the Louisville Courier Journal, plus South Dakota and Louisiana. Other states’ bans will take effect in 30 days, like Idaho, per Boise State Public Radio. — In Texas, almost all abortion will be outlawed in 30 days, per the Texas Tribune. Texas A.G. KEN PAXTON announced he would close agency offices early today as a “memorial” to “almost 70 million babies who have been killed in the womb.”
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| — Megan Messerly has a breakdown of where things stand in each state.
| | | | DON'T MISS DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED: Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today. | | | | | HOW WASHINGTON RESPONDED … — President JOE BIDEN: “The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” Biden warned in hastily scheduled remarks to the nation this afternoon. Biden directed federal agencies to take steps to help ensure access to medication abortion and travel across state lines to obtain abortions. He also urged Americans to vote in November — in an acknowledgment of Democrats’ relative powerlessness on the issue, Biden said only Congress could re-enshrine the right through legislation, and only if voters put more pro-abortion-rights leaders in office. Biden castigated the court for its decision. “Today, the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized,” he said. “This decision is a culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.” More from Jonathan Lemire and Eugene Daniels — DOJ: A.G. MERRICK GARLAND said in a statement that states may not ban medication abortion drugs. He said the Justice Department will “work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom.” — DONALD TRUMP to Fox News’ Brooke Singman : “This is following the Constitution, and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago … I think, in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody.” But, but, but: Behind the scenes, Trump has actually been telling Republicans privately that he worried the decision would be bad for the party in swing districts, per NYT’s Maggie Haberman. — The House GOP: Chatter has already started about trying to pass a national 15-week abortion ban, per CNN’s Mel Zanona. — Senate Judiciary Dems: Chair DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.) announced his committee will hold a hearing responding to the ruling next month. — Speaker NANCY PELOSI at her press conference this morning: "Reproductive freedom is on the ballot in November.” — Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER: “Millions upon millions of American women are having their rights taken from them by five unelected Justices on the extremist MAGA court.” — Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL: “The Court has corrected a terrible legal and moral error, like when Brown v. Board overruled Plessy v. Ferguson.” — Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.): “I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans.” — Sen. SUSAN COLLINS (R-Maine): “This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon.” — House Majority Whip JIM CLYBURN (D-S.C.) told USA Today’s Dylan Wells , in remarks that have ticked off the left: “It’s a little anticlimactic, I think we all expected this. And I’m hopeful, you know I have to read the decision to see exactly the extent to which we can move legislatively to respond to it.” MORE: “Democrats launch organizing hub to channel response to Supreme Court abortion decision,” by Elena Schneider … “What’s next for virtual abortions post-Roe,” by Ben Leonard
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Abortion-rights advocate Nadine Seiler demonstrates outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the court announced its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson June 24, 2022. | Francis Chung/E&E News/POLITICO | | 
Anti-abortion protesters gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Friday, June 24, 2022. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, a decision by its conservative majority to overturn the court's landmark abortion cases. | Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP Photo | | 
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) speaks with the media outside the U.S. Supreme Court after the court announced its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson June 24, 2022. (Francis Chung/E&E News/POLITICO) | GUNS IN AMERICA GUN BILL HEADS TO BIDEN’S DESK — The House voted 234-193 to pass the bipartisan gun bill today, sending it to the president’s desk . The legislation, which would expand background checks for gun owners and states to establish “red flag” laws, among other provisions, received the support of the full Democratic caucus and 14 GOP members. NOT AT THE TABLE — Whither Sen. MARK KELLY (D-Ariz.) in the congressional gun negotiations? He’s a prominent reform advocate, a senator with intimate knowledge of gun violence’s toll — and a man running for reelection. The Atlantic’s Russell Berman examines why Kelly didn’t take a lead role in helping craft the bipartisan gun reform bill, which has perplexed some in Arizona. A few possible explanations some political operatives offer: Kelly was deferring to Sen. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.), who had seniority and better ties with Republicans. Or, as a top target for Republicans this fall, Kelly may have actually made negotiations trickier if he’d played a big part.
| | | | JOIN TUESDAY FOR WOMEN RULE TALK ON THE ECONOMY: The U.S. economy is showing signs of slowing down after a period of robust growth last year. How would an economic slowdown affect women’s economic security across socioeconomic, racial, and geographic lines? Join POLITICO’s Women Rule for a conversation on what’s ahead for the U.S. economy and how it will impact women’s livelihoods and economic well-being. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH THE INVESTIGATIONS — The Justice Department and the House Jan. 6 committee are both seeking footage from a Danish documentary that tracked ROGER STONE in the aftermath of the 2020 election, WaPo’s Jon Swaine and Dalton Bennett report. Documentarian CHRISTOFFER GULDBRANDSEN apparently has 170 hours of footage, but he’s declined to provide it to investigators, “citing the need to maintain journalistic independence and to complete his film. The requests were made on a voluntary basis and Guldbrandsen has not been subpoenaed.” ALL POLITICS ENDORSEMENT WATCH — In Los Angeles, the big question for the mayoral runoff is whether Rep. KAREN BASS can land the backing of a big-name Democrat like Biden, VP KAMALA HARRIS or former President BARACK OBAMA, report the L.A. Times’ Noah Bierman and Benjamin Oreskes. Behind the scenes, Bass allies hope that such an endorsement could help her put away RICK CARUSO in the race. 2024 WATCH — Virginia Gov. GLENN YOUNGKIN is launching a schedule of campaign travel around the country for fellow Republicans, Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser reports. THE WHITE HOUSE THE FORMULA FUROR — “Biden officials still trying to get better baby formula supply data as shortages continue,” by Meredith Lee: “The FDA has awarded an exclusive contract to Nielsen to provide additional retail data to the administration.” PLAYBOOKERS OUT AND ABOUT — HawkEye 360 hosted a reception at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Thursday evening, with keynote remarks from Chuck Hagel. Also SPOTTED: Terry McAuliffe, Bud Cramer, Deborah Lee James, Mac Thornberry, Mark Lewis, Kari Bingen and John Serafini. MEDIA MOVES — The NYT is officially launching a London-based international investigations team, including new staffers Megha Rajagopalan, previously a Pulitzer winner at BuzzFeed, and Justin Scheck, previously a Polk winner at the WSJ. Announcement TRANSITIONS — Kirsten Madison will be VP for government relations at the National Endowment for Democracy. She most recently was director of homeland security for the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs GOP, and is a State Department and NSC alum. … Annika Olson is joining the National Air Traffic Controllers Association as political and legislative representative. She previously was assistant director of policy research at UT Austin.
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