Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 178

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

31 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

them. 

That means the Court may not overrule a decision, even 
a constitutional one, without a “special justification.”  Gam-
ble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 
11).  Stare  decisis  is,  of  course,  not  an  “inexorable  com-
mand”;  it  is  sometimes  appropriate  to  overrule  an  earlier 
decision.  Pearson  v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 233 (2009). 
But the Court must have a good reason to do so over and
above the belief “that the precedent was wrongly decided.” 
Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc., 573 U. S. 258, 
266 (2014).  “[I]t is not alone sufficient that we would decide 
a case differently now than we did then.”  Kimble v. Marvel 
Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455 (2015). 

The majority today lists some 30 of our cases as overrul-
ing precedent, and argues that they support overruling Roe 
and Casey.  But none does, as further described below and 
in the Appendix.  See infra, at 61–66.  In some, the Court 
only partially modified or clarified a precedent.  And in the 
rest, the Court relied on one or more of the traditional stare 
decisis factors in reaching its conclusion.  The Court found, 
for example, (1) a change in legal doctrine that undermined 
or made obsolete the earlier decision; (2) a factual change
that had the same effect; or (3) an absence of reliance be-
cause the earlier decision was less than a decade old.  (The 
majority is wrong when it says that we insist on a test of
changed law or fact alone, although that is present in most 
of the cases.  See ante, at 69.)  None of those factors apply
here: Nothing—and in particular, no significant legal or fac-
tual change—supports overturning a half-century of settled 
law  giving  women  control  over  their  reproductive  lives. 
First,  for  all  the  reasons  we  have  given, Roe  and  Casey 
were correct.  In holding that a State could not “resolve” the 
debate  about  abortion  “in  such  a  definitive  way  that  a 
woman lacks all choice in the matter,” the Court protected
women’s liberty and women’s equality in a way comporting 
with  our  Fourteenth  Amendment  precedents.  Casey,  505