Supreme Court to weigh Kentucky AG’s power to defend abortion restriction

The Supreme Court on Monday took up a bid by Kentucky’s Republican attorney general to defend a restrictive abortion regulation that was struck down by lower courts.

The justices’ move means the court will decide next term whether Attorney General Daniel Cameron can intervene in a challenge to the GOP-backed law that abortion rights advocates say would effectively ban the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The court will consider only the narrow issue of Cameron’s authority to defend the law in the lower courts, not the constitutionality of the underlying regulation, which would prohibit a procedure known as dilation and evacuation that abortion opponents say is particularly cruel. 

A federal appeals court in June rejected Cameron’s request to argue on behalf of the law after Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) abandoned its defense.

The legal challenge, brought by a Louisville-based abortion clinic and two of its doctors, argues that the Kentucky regulation places an unconstitutionally heavy burden on a woman’s right to abortion.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represents the abortion clinic in the dispute, EMW Women’s Surgical Center, had asked the justices to deny Cameron’s appeal.

“This case is only about whether the Attorney General, after having sat on the sidelines of this lawsuit, can jump in at the last minute in an effort to revive an unconstitutional law,” Andrew Beck, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement.

Arguments in the case, Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center (20-601), will be heard during the court’s next term that begins in October.