While the court will hear arguments this week, the case itself won’t get to the underlying legality of the law.
Instead, it focuses on procedural questions of whether an earlier injunction blocking the law’s implementation will be allowed to stand, and whether abortion clinics and doctors have the ability to bring legal challenges on behalf of their patients.
Catch up fast: The case came to the state’s highest court after Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) appealed a lower court order blocking the six-week ban, which had been in effect for three months last year after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
An appeals court said the preliminary injunction could stand and that Yost did not have the ability to appeal the preliminary injunction, since the trial court had not finished its case and it wasn’t a final decision.
Yost now wants the state Supreme Court to allow the ban to take effect. He also wants the court to allow his appeal to the injunction to continue.
What it means:
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The complicated, narrow legal questions will allow the justices to avoid weighing in on the constitutionality of the six-week law.
- However, if the court rules in favor of Yost, the law will be allowed to take effect ahead of a key ballot referendum in November.
Voters will decide whether to pass an amendment that would establish “a fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” including the right to an abortion up to the point of viability.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the GOP-led ballot board’s language, which includes the phrase “unborn child,” asserting it is accurate and not misleading.
A similar case in Kentucky resulted in the state’s strict abortion ban being allowed to take effect, after the state Supreme Court ruled providers did not have third-party standing to sue on behalf of their patients. Last year, Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure that would have denied any constitutional protections for abortion, but the law remains in effect.
