Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf
Page Number: 134.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

19 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

decisis, the concurrence refuses to follow the all-things-con-
sidered balancing test that decision employed when strik-
ing down Texas’s admitting privileges law.  In the process,
the concurrence rightly recounts many of the problems with
raw balancing tests.  But then, switching directions again,
the concurrence insists we are bound by an alternative hold-
ing  in  Whole  Woman’s  Health.    According  to  the  concur-
rence, this alternative holding declared that the Texas law 
imposed  an  impermissible  “substantial  obstacle”  to  abor-
tion access in light only of the burdens the law imposed—
“independent  of  [any]  discussion  of  [the  law’s]  benefits.” 
Ante, at 11 (ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment).  And, 
the  concurrence  concludes,  because  the  facts  of  this  suit 
look like those in Whole Woman’s Health, we must find an 
impermissible substantial obstacle here too.

But in this footwork lie at least two missteps.  For one, 
the facts of this suit cannot be so neatly reduced to Whole 
Woman’s Health redux.  See ante, at 2–5; ante, at 9–11, 15– 
24  (ALITO,  J.  dissenting).    For  another,  Whole  Woman’s 
Health nowhere issued the alternative holding on which the 
concurrence pins its argument.  At no point did the Court
hold that the burdens imposed by the Texas law alone—di-
vorced from any consideration of the law’s benefits—could 
suffice to establish a substantial obstacle.  To the contrary, 
Whole Woman’s Health insisted that the substantial obsta-
cle test “requires that courts consider the burdens a law im-
poses  on  abortion  access  together  with  the  benefits  th[e] 
la[w]  confer[s].”  578  U. S.,  at  ___–___  (emphasis  added) 
(slip op., at 19–20).  And whatever else respect for stare de-
cisis might suggest, it cannot demand allegiance to a non-
existent  ruling  inconsistent  with  the  approach  actually 
taken by the Court. 

The  concurrence’s  fallback  argument  doesn’t  solve  the 
problem either.  So what if Whole Woman’s Health rejected
the  benefits-free  version  of  the  “substantial  obstacle”  test 
the concurrence endorses?  The concurrence assures us that