Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Supreme Court Hears Arguments Today On State AG's Intervention To Defend Abortion Law [UPDATED]

Today the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center. In the case, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision (full text of decision) refused to allow the state attorney general to intervene to defend the constitutionality of a Kentucky statute which banned D&E abortions prior to fetal demise. The AG sought to intervene after the 6th Circuit held the statute unconstitutional and no state official would seek a rehearing or an appeal. The Supreme Court's grant of review was limited to the question of whether intervention should have been allowed. SCOTUSblog has a preview of today's arguments. The arguments will be streamed live on C-SPAN at 10:00 a.m. EST. The SCOTUSblog case page has links to all the filings in the case. When a transcript and recordings of the arguments become available, I will update this post with links to them.

UPDATE: Here are links to the transcript and audio of the oral arguments. CNBC reports extensively on the oral arguments in an article titled Supreme Court signals it will side with Kentucky attorney general in bid to defend restrictive abortion law.