Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/21a24_8759.pdf
Page Number: 11.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

1 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

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No. 21A24 
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WHOLE WOMAN’S HEALTH ET AL. v. AUSTIN REEVE 
JACKSON, JUDGE, ET AL. 

ON APPLICATION FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF 

[September 1, 2021]

 JUSTICE  KAGAN,  with  whom  JUSTICE  BREYER  and 

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, dissenting. 

Without full briefing or argument, and after less than 72 
hours’  thought,  this  Court  greenlights  the  operation  of
Texas’s patently unconstitutional law banning most abor-
tions.  The Court thus rewards Texas’s scheme to insulate 
its law from judicial review by deputizing private parties to
carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf. 
As of last night, and because of this Court’s ruling, Texas 
law prohibits abortions for the vast majority of women who
seek them—in clear, and indeed undisputed, conflict with 
Roe and Casey. 

Today’s  ruling  illustrates  just  how  far  the  Court’s 
“shadow-docket” decisions may depart from the usual prin-
ciples of appellate process.  That ruling, as everyone must
agree, is of great consequence.  Yet the majority has acted
without any guidance from the Court of Appeals—which is
right now considering the same issues.  It has reviewed only
the most cursory party submissions, and then only hastily. 
And it barely bothers to explain its conclusion—that a chal-
lenge to an obviously unconstitutional abortion regulation
backed by a wholly unprecedented enforcement scheme is
unlikely to prevail.  In all these ways, the majority’s deci-
sion  is  emblematic  of  too  much  of  this  Court’s  shadow-
docket decisionmaking—which every day becomes more un-