Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf
Page Number: 47.0

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JUNE MEDICAL SERVICES L. L. C. v. RUSSO 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring
ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment 

505 U. S. 833, 878 (1992) (plurality opinion)).

I  joined  the  dissent  in  Whole  Woman’s  Health  and  con-
tinue  to  believe  that  the  case  was  wrongly  decided.  The 
question  today  however  is  not  whether  Whole  Woman’s 
Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in 
deciding  the  present  case.  See  Moore  v.  Texas,  586  U. S. 
___, ___ (2019) (ROBERTS, C. J., concurring) (slip op., at 1). 
Today’s case is a challenge from several abortion clinics
and  providers  to  a  Louisiana  law  nearly  identical  to  the 
Texas  law  struck  down  four  years  ago  in  Whole  Woman’s 
Health.  Just like the Texas law, the Louisiana law requires
physicians performing abortions to have “active admitting 
privileges at a hospital . . . located not further than thirty
miles from the location at which the abortion is performed.” 
La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §40:1061.10(A)(2)(a) (West Cum. Supp.
2020).  Following a six-day bench trial, the District Court 
found that Louisiana’s law would “result in a drastic reduc-
tion in the number and geographic distribution of abortion
providers.”  June  Medical  Services  LLC  v.  Kliebert,  250 
F. Supp. 3d 27, 87 (MD La. 2017).  The law would reduce 
the number of clinics from three to “one, or at most two,” 
and the number of physicians providing abortions from five
to  “one,  or  at  most  two,”  and  “therefore  cripple  women’s
ability to have an abortion in Louisiana.”  Id., at 87–88. 

The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent spe-
cial circumstances, to treat like cases alike.  The Louisiana 
law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe
as  that  imposed  by  the  Texas  law,  for  the  same  reasons. 
Therefore  Louisiana’s  law  cannot  stand  under  our  prece-
dents. 

I 

Stare  decisis  (“to  stand  by  things  decided”)  is  the  legal 
term for fidelity to precedent.  Black’s Law Dictionary 1696 
(11th  ed.  2019).    It  has  long  been  “an  established  rule  to
abide  by  former  precedents,  where  the  same  points  come