Why can&#39;t the Supreme court overturn Texas abortion law if abortion during the first semester is a constitutional right? Texas designed its law in a unique way to allow abortions to be banned without a court intervening, by authorizing any private citizen to sue doctors and clinics who perform abortions on women more than approximately six weeks after a woman’s last period. The Texas law also allows any private citizen to sue people who assist women in obtaining an abortion after that time period. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/supreme-court-vote-texas-abortion-law-allows-ban-without-mentioning-ncna1278401 A woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during the first stage and the Texas law effectively prevents women from obtaining abortion as clinics will be unable to run the financial and other risks that come from waiting for a private person to sue them under the Texas law depriving them from their constitutional rights. Why can't the Supreme Court intervene?
A good starting point would be the SCOTUS opinion, or everything on SCOTUSblog, especially the application for injunctive relief filed on Aug. 30. There is a long sequence of petitions and orders which ask the courts either to issue an injunction preventing the law from taking force, or to vacate an administrative stay of proceedings by the lower court regarding petitioner's challenge. The lower court denied the petitions, therefore petitioners turn to SCOTUS to get an injunction against the law. Then you can turn to the SCOTUS opinion to see what the reasons were, for and against the petition. The majority position is that an applicant must carry the burden of making a “strong showing” that it is “likely to succeed on the merits,” that it will be “irreparably injured absent a stay,” that the balance of the equities favors it, and that a stay is consistent with the public interest. The majority concludes that The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden. Immediately after this the court comments that federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. However, it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention The law states that Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who and the named respondents (government workers of various sorts) all appear to be precluded from filing an action – thus an injunction against the judge is superfluous since he cannot file a lawsuit anyhow. It is also unclear whether SCOTUS can issue an injunction against state judges asked to decide a lawsuit under Texas’s law. When SCOTUS say &quot;it is unclear&quot; in this context, they mean that petitions did not adequately demonstrate that the court can in fact issue such an injunction. It's not that SCOTUS cannot decide such matters after extensive consideration of the facts / arguments and discussion, it's that the standards for an emergency action require something that the court found lacking in the petition: we cannot say the applicants have met their burden to prevail in an injunction or stay application. In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit.
As Mark's answer indicates, you are evidently thinking of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. "Public acts" being laws, it may seem at first glance that states must fully respect the laws of other states. But the interpretation of this clause by the courts is rather different, and has evolved a bit over time. The short of the (modern) matter is that it mostly applies to matters concerning the judiciary. SCOTUS has recognized a "public policy exception" to the clause, which limits the ability of the clause to force a state to abide by laws which are in conflict with their own (for the most part: they don't have to). Driving privileges, and more generally who is licensed to do what (doctors, hunting, concealed carry, etc.), within a state falls under that public policy exception. So Texas does not have to obey New Hampshire's laws concerning the legal privilege to drive. As a basic sanity test, if this were not the case, then why wouldn't everybody in Texas not simply bounce off to New Hampshire for a summer to get their license there and then return to Texas and never bother with insurance? It entirely undercuts the state's sovereignty and ability to set their own laws if any other state can so easily create loopholes around them. Moreover, despite what the name might suggest, a "driver's license" is more a certification that you have the requisite skills, physical performance (passing an eye test), and knowledge to drive safely and in accordance with that state's traffic laws. It certainly makes sense for a state to require you to demonstrate at least that much, but they may also impose additional requirements. A requirement for insurance demonstrates your ability to handle financial liabilities that may reasonably result from your driving. All states currently accept a valid out-of-state license in the above sense: that you are certified to have the requisite skills, that it is valid proof of age, etc. Though if you become a permanent resident there they may require you to take new tests. However to legally drive in any particular state you must not only have such certification (a driver's license) but also satisfy any other conditions, such as age requirements and insurance requirements. As an aside, such state-by-state variations as to who is licensed to do what are in fact quite common, especially across history, even on very prominent issues. But even nationwide resolutions of those issues via SCOTUS have never, to my knowledge, utilized the Full Faith and Credit clause to do so. And, really, how could they? By saying since some state could force all other states to do X via the clause, then X must be a constitutional requirement? Or that any one state could unilaterally dictate laws in all other states? Madness! For one example, anti-miscegenation laws, which outlawed (certain) interracial marriages, were quite common until 1967, when SCOTUS struck them all down using the 14th amendment. More recently, gay marriage was forced to be recognized in all states, also via the 14th amendment. In both cases, before those SCOTUS rulings, the courts had generally recognized that the Full Faith and Credit clause did not compel the state to recognize (out-of-state) marriages it did not want to recognize. These both fell under the public policy exception.
No The case was dismissed on procedural reasons. Like this. Well, perhaps not so pedantic but there are things that have to happen before the Supreme Court can get involved and they haven’t. For example, the Supreme Court only has original jurisdiction in a limited classes of case; if this isn’t one of those (and it isn’t) it has to be heard in a court that does and then get appealed up the chain. When they have, the court will make a decision on the merits.
Constitution of the USA, Article IV, Section 1: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. and the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, clause 3): [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; SCOTUS has found the former to mean that states that do not allow same-sex marriages in their laws must recognize same-sex marriages registered by other states - Obergefell v. Hodges. Maybe one could argue that driver licenses are not equivalent among states, but I would expect judges (SCOTUS) to require a very well reasoned explanation. For example, maybe Alaska could refuse to recognize licenses from Florida because Florida drivers do not know how to cope with snowed roads. But even in that case Alaska probably would need to produce data showing that these measures aim to serve the public interest (avoid accidents) and that there are no other ways of getting the same result. OTOH the Commerce Clause has been successfully used to avoid states mandating racial segregation of travellers, so it is quite reasonable to see it being used to prevent a state from trying to limit the mobility of citizens from other states (again, in the supposition that the state restricting it cannot show a compelling reason to do so). AFAIK, only the Federal Government could invoke the Commerce Clause; I would expect a lot more people (in your example, the PA government or maybe even any PA driver) would have standing.
The executive can only make laws within the scope of the powers granted to them by the constitution (of which there are very few) or delegated to them by congress. An executive order that oversteps those bounds is void as recent experience has shown.
No The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. Any courts the Congress creates are, by definition, inferior. Of course, Congress can overrule a SCOTUS decision by passing a law to that effect,unless the decision defines a right under the Constitution. So they couldn’t overturn Roe but they could overturn Dobbs. It’s largely the gutlessness of Congress in grappling with controversial issues that has put SCOTUS in the position of lawmaker.
In that case, Cruise-Gulyas was subject to a second stop, and the court found that the second stop was an illegal seizure. There is no qualified immunity since this was an exercise of a clearly established First Amendment right. The authority to seize her ended when the first stop ended. The finger is not a basis for a stop, since it does not violate any law ("This ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity", Swartz v. Insogna, 704 F.3d 105.
In general, people have less expectation of privacy in cars than in their homes. To challenge a search and/or seizure under the Fourth Amendment, a person must have standing - the right to sue (that is, you must have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place where the search happened; if you didn't, no standing - can't claim your privacy was violated if you had no privacy). The US Circuit Courts are split on the issue of unauthorized rental drivers and whether they have the same reasonable expectation of privacy as the authorized driver of a rental car would have. Some Circuits allow the unauthorized driver to challenge a car search if the authorized driver gave them permission. Some Circuits look only at the agreement and if the driver isn't authorized on that, they're out of luck. The 6th Circuit is more case-by-case, with a presumption that driver can't challenge the search that can be overcome based on the facts. (All this info from US v. Haywood, 324 F.3d 514) There's a current case before the Supreme Court (argued January 9, 2018), Byrd v. US, on this very issue. This SCOTUSblog page has a lot of information on the case. Edited to add: Texas is in the Fifth Circuit, which follows the rule that unauthorized drivers don't have standing to challenge a search/seizure even with the authorized driver's permission to drive the car; unauthorized drivers of rental cars don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy because they lack a possessory interest in the car and/or they're violating the rental agreement. Basically, even though it seems the cops' stop of the car would've violated the Fourth Amendment if he were the authorized driver, since this happened in Texas, he's not going to be able to challenge the stop. IMO, this is incredibly unjust especially when the cops admitted there was no probable cause, so hopefully the Supreme Court makes this rule obsolete and allows unauthorized drivers to exercise their Fourth Amendment rights. Some law review articles on the topic of unauthorized rental drivers: "Hertz and the Fourth Amendment" "Resolving a Three-Way Circuit Split"