The American Bar Association has a rare warning for the Supreme Court. It's filed a brief, something it generally does not do, on behalf of abortion clinics challenging a Louisiana law in arguments Wednesday. "Confidence in the integrity of any judicial system, and respect for that system, is enhanced if the citizenry is convinced that judicial decisions are not arbitrary, the product of the prejudices of the decision-maker, rather than the law," it said in its brief.
At issue in the case the court will hear Wednesday isn't just access to abortion for Louisiana's women, it's the integrity of the court. Because the case, June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, is all but identical to another case the court decided in 2016, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. In that 5-3 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy and the court's four liberal justices agreed to strike down the Texas forced birth law requiring that physicians performing abortions have admitting privileges in nearby hospitals. They said that while the state had a legitimate interest in protecting the health of pregnant women, this law didn't do that. What it did was make it much harder for women to get an abortion. There were only eight justices that sat for that case because it was after Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell was blockading President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland.
Which leads us to why the court is taking up the case now; Trump's appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are on the court. This should be settled law now. This should count as the precedent set by an impartial court, the kind of precedent Sen. Susan Collins was so sure Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would respect when she gave them her vote.
The Supreme Court is just one decision away from losing its integrity, from being as infested with out-of-the-mainstream extremism as Mitch McConnell's Senate. As if it hadn’t already made itself a key issue in the 2020 election by taking on this case, June Medical, it sealed that by deciding it would hear the challenge to the Affordable Care Act from Republican states. That puts not just the White House but the Senate in the bull’s-eye for 2020.