U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana abortion law, won’t hear federal death penalty challenge

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law regulating abortion clinics, reasserting a commitment to abortion rights over fierce opposition from dissenting conservative justices in the first big abortion case of the Trump era.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined with his four more liberal colleagues in ruling that the law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals violates the abortion right the court first announced in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

In two previous abortion cases, Roberts had favored restrictions.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also refused to block the execution of four federal prison inmates who are scheduled to be put to death in July and August.

The executions would mark the first use of the death penalty on the federal level since 2003. The justices rejected an appeal from four inmates who were convicted of killing children.

The court’s action leaves no obstacles standing in the way of the executions, the first of which is scheduled for July 13.

The inmates are separately asking a federal judge in Washington to impose a new delay on their executions over other legal issues that have yet to be resolved.