Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) blasted Chief Justice John Roberts‘s decision in the landmark Supreme Court opinion upending Roe v. Wade, arguing his decision to disagree with the other Republican-appointed justices shows he “is just making this up.”
In a decision released Friday, the justices voted 6-3 to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks while allowing states to make laws severely limiting or restricting abortion procedures. The reasoning for the opinion came down to a 5-1-3 split, with Justice Samuel Alito writing the majority ruling overturning Roe, while Roberts’s concurrence sought a narrower ruling that focused solely on upholding Mississippi’s ban. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.
“I think Roberts, his opinion was derived from political caution, rather than legal fidelity to the Constitution,” the Texas senator said Sunday on his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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Roberts wrote in the opinion that he would have upheld Mississippi’s ban on almost all abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, though he wouldn’t have taken a “dramatic step” to take Roe “all the way down to the studs.” The chief justice indicated he would have opted for a more “measured course” for the high court, suggesting that the other five Republican-appointed justices had gone too far to overturn Roe.
“Roberts is making this up. And in fact, both sides in this litigation said, ‘Nope, you’ve either got to overturn Roe or uphold it entirely.’ Both of them agree this is the whole enchilada,” Cruz said, referring to the Justice Department‘s position during oral arguments in December, when Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar contended that upholding the Mississippi law would effectively upend Roe.
Cruz also praised Alito’s authorship of the opinion, which changed “very little” from the leaked draft of the ruling on May 2.
“I think it really is a statement from the court that lawlessness, that leaking an opinion, that rioting, that attempted murder, is not going to change the operation of our judicial system,” Cruz said, adding that Alito “eviscerates Roberts.”
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“Some states have set deadlines for obtaining an abortion that are shorter than Mississippi’s,” Alito wrote in response to Roberts. “If we held only that Mississippi’s 15-week rule is constitutional, we would soon be called upon to pass on the constitutionality of a panoply of laws with shorter deadlines or no deadline at all.”
“The ‘measured course’ charted by the concurrence would be fraught with turmoil until the court answered the question that the concurrence seeks to defer,” Alito added.
