Opinion ID: 4433771
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Pre-Enforcement Facial Challenge

Text: The State argues that the district court erred in issuing the preliminary injunction because a facial challenge requires evidence of a law’s eﬀects, and that evidence can be obtained only by allowing a law to go into eﬀect. The State’s position derives primarily from language in our decision in A Woman’s Choice-East Side Women’s Clinic v. Newman, where we said that “it is an abuse of discretion for a district judge to issue a pre- enforcement injunction while the eﬀects of the law (and reasons for those eﬀects) are open to debate.” 305 F.3d 684, 693 (7th Cir. 2002). Strictly speaking, this passage was dicta in the opinion, which addressed a permanent injunction after discovery and a full trial, not the earlier preliminary injunction, but it was obviously considered dicta. The State’s position overstates the evidence required for a pre-enforcement facial challenge, as shown by a broader look at cases decided before and after A Woman’s Choice. When we decided A Woman’s Choice, there was a sharper conflict in Supreme Court precedent on this question. In United States v. Salerno, the Supreme Court had said broadly that, outside the First Amendment, a law is facially invalid only where “no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid.” 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987). But Salerno was about the Bail Reform Act. In Casey and in Stenberg v. Carhart, the Court had invalidated two abortion statutes on pre-enforcement facial challenges without even mentioning Salerno. See Casey, 505 U.S. at 845, 895; Stenberg, 530 U.S. 914, 945 (2000). No. 17-2428 11 The State argues that A Woman’s Choice resolved the tension and that “the applicable test on a pre-enforcement facial challenge to an abortion regulation is whether the law will incontrovertibly impose an undue burden.” State’s Br. at 12. It is diﬃcult to reconcile this rule of thumb with the general standard for preliminary injunctions, which requires the district court to exercise its sound equitable discretion in balancing several factors. See Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 24 (2008). Also, other decisions by this court, both before and after A Woman’s Choice, have recognized that the law on this question has not been as clear-cut as the State argues. See, e.g., Zbaraz v. Madigan, 572 F.3d at 381 n.6 (noting “some disagreement” over applicability of Casey’s “large fraction” test or Salerno’s “no set of circumstances” test—because of 2008 Supreme Court decision aﬃrming Salerno’s applicability outside abortion context—but upholding parental notice requirement with judicial bypass under either standard); Karlin v. Foust, 188 F.3d 446, 483 (7th Cir. 1999) (noting “considerable disagreement” over which standard to apply because Casey “appears to have tempered, if not rejected, Salerno’s stringent ‘no set of circumstances’ standard in the abortion context,” but assuming applicability of Casey’s large fraction test because neither party appealed district court’s use of Casey test); see also Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Inc. v. Van Hollen, 738 F.3d 786, 788, 789 (7th Cir. 2013) (aﬃrming injunction against requirement that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospital). The biggest problem for the State’s argument is that A Woman’s Choice was decided before the Supreme Court decided Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which confirmed that the Casey undue burden standard applies to pre-enforcement facial challenges to statutes regulating abortion. 136 S. 12 No. 17-2428 Ct. at 2309–10 (identifying Casey undue burden standard as applicable test); id. at 2314–18 (applying undue burden standard to facial challenge to surgical center requirement statute); id. at 2320 (identifying denominator for large-fraction test). In Whole Woman’s Health, the plaintiﬀs brought a pre-enforcement facial challenge to a Texas statute requiring that abortion facilities abide by the same minimum facility standards as ambulatory surgical centers. See id. at 2300; id. at 2301 (noting that petitioners brought suit on April 6, 2014 seeking “an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the surgical-center provision anywhere in Texas”). The Supreme Court applied the undue burden standard and reversed the denial of an injunction, without citing Salerno. To support that reversal, the Court relied on pre-enforcement evidence from the district court. E.g., id. at 2317.3 These applications fit with the Supreme Court’s recent acknowledgment that facial challenges may “proceed under a diverse array of constitutional provisions.” City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 135 S. Ct. 2443, 2449 (2015) (collecting cases); see also 3 The briefing in Whole Woman’s Health supports this approach. In its brief, Texas assumed that Casey’s “large fraction” test applied but argued that the Court should apply Salerno’s “no set of circumstances” test if the Court addressed the issue. Brief for Respondents at 30 n.10, Whole Woman’s Health, 136 S. Ct. 2292 (No. 15-274), 2016 WL 344496, at  n.10. The Court did not address this argument explicitly but rejected it implicitly, following Casey. The dissenting Justices in Whole Woman’s Health also did not invoke Salerno. Another portion of Whole Woman’s Health challenged a requirement that had been allowed to take effect, that physicians have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The evidence showed that after the requirement took effect, it led to closure of about half the facilities providing abortions in Texas and imposed an undue burden on women’s right to choose to terminate their pregnancies. 136 S. Ct. at 2312–13. No. 17-2428 13 Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Fact and Fiction About Facial Challenges, 99 Calif. L. Rev. 915, 918 (2011) (“Facial challenges also succeed much more frequently than either Supreme Court Justices or most scholarly commentators have recognized.”).