A unanimous panel of three judges from the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, refused to suspend Judge Chuang’s injunction while an appeal was underway. The Trump administration, which often seeks emergency Supreme Court intervention when it loses in lower courts, asked judges in August to suspend the injunction.
In October, at its first meeting with the case, the Supreme Court issued an unusual order returning the case to Judge Chuang, saying that “a more comprehensive record would assist in the review of this court” and instructing him to rule in 40 days. However, the contested requirement remained suspended.
Judge Chuang issued a second opinion on December 9, again blocking the requirement. The “health risk just got worse,” he wrote.
The Trump administration has returned to the Supreme Court. His report focused mainly on data from Indiana and Nebraska, where state laws continued to require women to take the pills in person.
In these states, the government told ministers, the number of abortions has increased over the previous year. This shows, according to the government’s writing, that the requirement does not amount to an unconstitutional burden on the right to abortion.
This argument, the medical group’s lawyers wrote in response, “defies the rudimentary principles of statistical analysis.” Many factors may be responsible for the increase in the number of abortions in both states during the pandemic, they wrote, including interruptions in access to contraceptives, unemployment and other circumstances “that made unwanted pregnancies more likely and parenting less sustainable for some” .
Judge Sotomayor was also not impressed by the argument. “Reading the statistically insignificant and selected data from the government,” she wrote, “is no more informative than reading tea leaves.”