Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf
Page Number: 130

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

15 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

Woman’s  Health  for  the  proposition  that  admitting  privi-
leges requirements offer no benefit when it comes to patient 
safety or otherwise.  But Whole Woman’s Health found an 
absence of benefit based only on the particular factual rec-
ord before it.  Nothing in the decision suggested that its con-
clusions about the costs and benefits of the Texas statute 
were  universal  principles  of  law,  medicine,  or  economics 
true in all places and at all times.  See, e.g., 579 U. S., at 
___–___,  ___,  ___–___  (slip  op.,  at  22–23,  26,  31–32).    Yet 
that is exactly how the plurality treats those conclusions—
all while leaving unmentioned the facts Louisiana amassed 
in an effort to show that its law promises patient benefits
in this place at this time.

Not only does today’s decision treat factual questions as
if they were legal ones, it treats legal questions as if they 
were facts.  We have previously explained that it would “be 
inconsistent  with  the  idea  of  a  unitary  system  of  law”  for 
the  Supreme  Court  to  defer  to  lower  court  legal  holdings. 
Ornelas  v.  United  States,  517  U. S.  690,  697  (1996).    Yet, 
the plurality today reviews for clear error not only the dis-
trict court’s findings about how the law will affect abortion 
access,  but  also  the  lower  court’s  judgment  that  the  law’s
effects impose a “substantial obstacle.”  The plurality defers
not only to the district court’s findings about the extent of 
the  law’s  benefits,  but  also  to  the  lower  court’s  judgment 
that  the  benefits  are  so  limited  that  the  law’s  burden  on 
abortion access is “undue.”  By declining to apply our nor-
mal  de novo  standard  of  review  to  questions  of  law  like 
these, today’s decision proceeds on the remarkable premise
that, even if the district court was wrong on the law, a duly
enacted  statute  must  fall  because  the  lower  court  wasn’t 
clearly wrong. 

* 
After so much else, one might at least hope that the legal
test lower courts are tasked with applying in this area turns