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Justice Roberts Issues Ruling On Indiana Parental Notification For Abortion Law

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has issued an order that would allow the state of Indiana to enforce its law that requires parental notification for a minor to obtain an abortion.

The law was passed in 2017 but blocked by lower courts. Indiana asked the lower courts to reconsider the stay after the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade abortion protections in June.

The Seventh Circuit Court of appeals said it had to wait for formal notice of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe V Wade, which NBC News said would normally be given around July 25, before it could take action.

Indiana requested that the Supreme Court issue an immediate order as blocking the law was harmful to the state’s interests.

“Delay would only serve to prevent enforcement of a duly enacted state statute designed to protect minors, families, and the unborn,” the attorneys for the state of Indiana said in a filing with the court, NBC News reported.

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Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita celebrated the court’s decision in June in a press release.

“Following the landmark Dobbs decision, we eagerly anticipate clearer paths for Indiana’s commonsense laws protecting unborn children and their mothers,” he said. “We are grateful for the new day that has dawned, and we will remain steadfast in our fight for life.”

“This issue — part of Kristina Box, Commissioner, Indiana Department of Health, et al., v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. — now has been remanded back to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for reconsideration following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” the press release said.

“Attorney General Rokita and his team already have sought relief from the injunction directly from the U.S. district court, which has expedited briefing at our request,” it said.

The Supreme Court has issued a few big decisions lately.

The court is set to be back to work in October and one case that it has agreed to hear has many waiting in anticipation.

The case is to decide if Republican legislators from North Carolina GOP have the authority to draw a partisan election map and not have state judges interfering

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The decision could impact future congressional and presidential elections. The high court will take up the case when its next term begins in October.

The case of Moore vs. Harper, asks the court to uphold the concept – known as the “independent state legislature” theory – that state legislators have the sole and “independent” authority to set rules for federal elections in their states, without interference or oversight by the governor or the state judges.

North Carolina GOP House Speaker Timothy Moore asked the high court to consider the case on appeal of his own state Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to strike down the theory relating to a gerrymandering case.

“In an election case out of North Carolina, SCOTUS agrees to review the “independent state legislature” theory next term. Under that theory, state legislatures have broad power to set rules for federal elections, even if state courts say those rules are unconstitutional,” SCOTUS Blog said.

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“The North Carolina election case is Moore v. Harper. SCOTUS also adds two other new cases to its docket for next term: Percoco v. U.S. (a case about honest-services fraud brought by a former Andrew Cuomo aide) and Ciminelli v. U.S. (a case about federal wire fraud),” it said.

Prior to that, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its most significant pro-Second Amendment decision in nearly two decades when justices ruled 6-3 that New York’s concealed carry law was unconstitutionally restrictive.

The ruling, experts say, is significant because it means similarly restrictive concealed carry laws, limited primarily to blue states, are also likely to be successfully challenged.

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