(CN) — The Sixth Circuit on Friday upheld a federal judge's decision to block a Tennessee law banning abortions as early as six weeks.
The law, passed last year, makes it a Class C felony if a doctor performs an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected or at six weeks or later, and imposes a so-called reasons ban — the criminalization of the procedure if a woman is seeking an abortion because of the fetus’ race or sex or if the fetus was diagnosed with Down syndrome.
At the time of its passing, Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, called the legislation the “strongest pro-life law in our state’s history.”
Within a month, the law was blocked after reproductive rights groups challenged it even before the governor signed it.
In blocking the law, U.S. District Judge William Campbell Jr., a Donald Trump appointee, said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in challenging the law and that portions of the statute — the ban based on discrimination — were so vague that the law was unconstitutional.
“When a law threatens criminal sanctions, such vague provisions and potential varied interpretations cannot stand,” he wrote.
A 2-1 majority of the Sixth Circuit agreed Friday, after hearing oral arguments in the case in April.
“The district court properly issued a preliminary injunction … because the provisions are constitutionally unsound," Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote for the majority.
“Any decision to overturn the district court’s finding of facts and well-reasoned decision would cast this court in the role of judicial activists,” she added.
Daughtrey was joined in the majority by U.S. Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore, a fellow Clinton appointee.
U.S. Circuit Judge Amul Roger Thapar, a Trump appointee, partially dissented, saying he would have upheld the reasons ban.
The majority’s “decision to strike down the anti-discrimination statute at the altar of abortion is wrong,” he wrote.
He said the provision's operation is clear.
“Its causation requirement — ‘because of’ — mirrors scores of federal and state statutes," Thapar wrote. "Indeed, hundreds of criminal laws have exactly the same causation requirement … Conspiracy statutes. Anti-money laundering schemes. Anti-discrimination laws. Are they all now up for grabs?”
The Cincinnati-based appeals court’s ruling comes at a time when Republican state lawmakers across the country are enacting anti-abortion laws, many of which are meeting swift legal challenges.
Daughtrey noted as much in her majority opinion, writing that “state legislatures recently have passed more anti-abortion regulations than perhaps at any other time in this country’s history.”
“However, this development is not a signal to the courts to change course,” she added. “It is, in fact, just the opposite. The judiciary exists as a check on majoritarian rule. It has a duty to protect the constitutional rights, including privacy and bodily autonomy, of those within its borders, even — or especially — if the relevant class of people ‘has been subjected to a ‘tradition of disfavor’ by our laws.’”
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, applauded the ruling in a statement Friday.
“After Texas rendered the constitutional right to abortion meaningless and other states continued to attack access to care, the Sixth Circuit’s decision to block Tennessee’s six-week abortion ban and reason ban brings some relief,” she said. “Planned Parenthood will continue fighting alongside our partners until patients everywhere have meaningful access to the care they need when they need it, and can make their own personal decisions and determine their own futures — free of interference by politicians.”
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