If the motion at issue here were a defendant's motion for summary judgment, and if the plaintiff's only basis for proceeding with the suit were a claim of improper legislative purpose, one would demand some evidence of that improper purpose in order to avoid a nonsuit. And what is at issue here is not even a defendant's motion for summary judgment, but a plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunctive relief, as to which the requirement for substantial proof is much higher. It frequently is observed that a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary and drastic remedy, one that should not be granted unless the movant, by a clear showing , carries the burden of persuasion. Brief in Opposition 7. But this line of argument is squarely foreclosed by Casey itself.
Respondents fall back on the fact that an anti abortion group drafted the Montana law.
But that says nothing significant about the legislature's purpose in passing it. Post, at 4. But it is difficult to see how that helps rather than harms respondents' case. The dissent does not claim that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder, nor was that the basis on which the Court of Appeals relied. And there is simply no evidence that the legislature intended the law to do what it plainly did not do.