AP Photo/Steven Senne
- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer criticized the court's decision on a Texas abortion law.
- Breyer called the court's majority opinion "very, very, very, wrong."
- The Supreme Court allowed the Texas six-week abortion ban to take effect.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer criticized his fellow conservative justices' recent decision to uphold a strict Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Breyer, the court's most senior liberal member, called the majority opinion "very, very, very, wrong," in an interview with NPR published on Friday.
"I'll add one more 'very,'" Breyer continued. "I wrote a dissent – and that's how it works."
The high court's ruling came down last Thursday, a day after the Texas ban went into effect. In a 5-4 vote, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, along with President Donald Trump's appointees Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, argued the law should stay in place as it's still being litigated in the lower courts.
The Texas statute, one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, bans the procedure after the six-week mark of pregnancy, a time when many people do not yet know they are pregnant. The law makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest and invites private citizens, rather than state officials, to enforce the ban. Successful plaintiffs can earn up to $10,000 in damages, in addition to legal fees.
The court's majority made clear that the ruling was technical and not based on the constitutionality of the law, overruling the dissenting votes cast by Breyer, along with the two other liberal members of the court, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts.
Breyer, in his dissenting opinion, said "a woman has a federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion during that first stage" of pregnancy, as established under the Supreme Court's 1937 landmark abortion decision, Roe v. Wade.
Democrats have expressed outrage over the court's move, calling the Texas law a violation of the Constitution and Roe. President Joe Biden's Department of Justice on Thursday filed a lawsuit over the Texas statute in an attempt to block the law and protect access to abortion in the Lone Star State.
But Breyer told NPR that the court's ruling was procedural and "so we'll see what happens in that area when we get a substantive matter in front of us."
The Supreme Court is due to consider the constitutionality of abortion in a major case this upcoming fall term, which could upend Roe v. Wade. The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, concerns a Mississippi law that would ban nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.