Brief urges US Supreme Court to overturn deceptive Texas law that creates unconstitutional limits on safe, legal abortion
NEW YORK, January 5, 2016 – Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP filed an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court on behalf of Freedom of Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM), Dr. Amesh Adalja (Forbes), Dr. Paul Hsieh (Forbes), Dr. Karen Salmieri, and Jacob Sullum (Reason magazine). Milbank’s clients support the petitioners in seeking to overturn a Texas law that creates unconstitutional limits on safe, legal abortion. The brief argues that unjustifiable health care regulations put individual liberty and free market principles at risk.
The amicus brief outlines the substantial harm Texas women will face if the nation’s highest court affirms a June 2015 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that allowed the law’s most damaging provisions to take effect. Unjustifiable regulations, like the Texas law, decrease the quality and availability of services and undermine a woman’s ability to make responsible health care decisions.
The law has already shuttered half of the abortion providers in Texas, and is poised to leave the nation’s second-largest state with 10 or fewer clinics. After intervening twice to keep the Texas clinics open, the Supreme Court agreed in November to review the law, which was designed to shut down clinics that provide safe, legal abortion under the guise of improving women’s health. Oral arguments have been scheduled for March 2, 2016. The amicus brief was prepared by Milbank litigation partner Atara Miller, associates Erin Culbertson and Emily Lilburn.
More details on the case can be found in a press release issued by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Click here to view the brief.
