Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch protested Tuesday against their colleagues’ decision to side with the Biden administration in an abortion-related appeal. The majority of the Supreme Court allow the government to withhold federal family planning funds for Oklahoma because the state refuses to refer pregnant patients to a national abortion hotline.
The order rejects Oklahoma’s emergency application gives no explanation; It simply notes that the application was denied and that Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch would have granted it if they had their way.
That lack of explanation is not unusual on the court’s so-called shade the dockwhere matters are decided on a faster timeline without full review or hearings. Nor is it surprising that these three justices split from their colleagues in the most recent abortion-related action, following the Court’s 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade. While Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch were only three of the five justices in Dobb’s Majority who voted to vacate Roe — Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were the other two — they may be the most reliable voices on anti-abortion litigation.
We only saw that last semester, for example when the court allowed emergency abortions in Idaho to proceed for now, over dissents from the same three justices.
In another new order over the summer on a separate issue, these three judges noted a voting rights petition from Arizona that they would have completely surrendered with the Republicans in that case, Republican National Committee vs. Mi Familia Vota. It was the latest indicator that voting rights are a wild card heading into November’s election, with those three justices potentially willing to go as far as Republicans want while the court’s other Republican appointees can decide how far the court will go as a whole.
The Supreme Court’s next term begins in October, and Tuesday’s decision suggests that dynamic is at play with abortion-related issues as well.
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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com