A couple of significant court rulings today:
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- ABORTION: A federal judge in Mississippi has blocked that state’s new ban on abortions at roughly six weeks of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Judge Carlton Reeves noted that many women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks. He’d earlier expressed skepticism about the law, on account U.S. Supreme Court precedent protecting legal abortion until viability of the fetus at roughly 23 weeks. The Alabama total ban has been challenged and likewise should be blocked soon. He had said the new law “smacks of defiance” of his previous ruling against a 15-week ban.
- GERRYMANDERING: The U.S. Supreme Court today temporarily blocked lower court rulings ordering that congressional districts in Ohio and Michigan be withdrawn because they’d been unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
The Supreme Court didn’t rule on the merits of the districting cases, but the decision delays efforts to get fair districts drawn in time for the 2020 election. The Supreme Court also has two other gerrymandering cases, one favoring Republicans in North Carolina and one favoring Democrats in Maryland.