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A divided Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law regulating abortion clinics, reasserting a commitment to abortion rights over fierce opposition from dissenting conservative justices in the first big abortion case of the Trump era. Chief Justice John Roberts and his four more liberal colleagues ruled that a law that requires doctors who perform abortions must have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals violates abortion rights the court first announced in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. (Sherman, 6/29)

Justice Stephen Breyer, in an opinion joined by rest of the court's liberal wing, wrote that the Louisiana law would make it "impossible for many women to obtain a safe, legal abortion in the State and [impose] substantial obstacles on those who could." Roberts, in a separate concurring opinion, disagreed with the liberal justices' reasoning but said he was bound by the precedent the court set just four years ago when it rejected a similar law in Texas. (Miranda Ollstein, 6/29)

But in the end, Chief Justice Roberts’s commitment to precedent sank the Louisiana law. “I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health,” he wrote on Monday, “and continue 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.” (Liptak, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: Supreme Court, Rejecting Restrictive La. Law, Refuses To Roll Back Abortion Rights 
The decision in June Medical Services v. Russo effectively upholds a case from just four years ago. In 2016, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a 5-3 majority struck down portions of a controversial Texas law, including not only the admitting privileges requirement but also a requirement for abortion clinics to meet the same standards as surgical centers that perform more advanced procedures. (Rovner, 6/29)

The Trump White House on Monday called the Supreme Court decision overturning a Louisiana law that abortion providers said made it harder for women to acquire abortion services “unfortunate," saying it showed justices were “imposing their own policy preference in favor of abortion to override legitimate abortion safety regulations.” A statement from White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that “the Supreme Court devalued both the health of mothers and the lives of unborn children” in making the ruling, which overturned a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers have admitting privileges with a nearby hospital. (Pecorin, 6/29)

Four other conservatives dissented, including Justice Kennedy’s successor, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “In my view, additional fact-finding is necessary to properly evaluate Louisiana’s law,” he wrote in a terse dissent that took up only two of the 133 pages six different justices filed in various plurality, concurring and dissenting opinions. (Bravin, 6/29)

Each of the court’s four most consistent conservatives wrote separately to describe their disagreement. (Barnes, 6/29)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: High Court’s Surprising Abortion Decision 
The Supreme Court surprised both sides in the polarized abortion battle Monday by ruling, 5-4, that a Louisiana law requiring doctors who perform the procedure to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital is an unconstitutional infringement of a woman’s right to an abortion. As expected, the court’s four liberals in the case, June Medical Services v. Russo, said that the law did not provide any protections for women and merely made it harder for them to obtain an abortion and that it was nearly identical to a Texas law struck down in 2016. (6/29)

It did not take Sara Gideon long to leverage Monday’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion in her race against Senator Susan Collins. When Ms. Collins, a Maine Republican, cast a decisive vote to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, she did so on the premise that he would uphold precedent to preserve abortion rights. But on Monday, Justice Kavanaugh dissented from a decision that did that, arguing that the court should have ruled differently than it did in a nearly identical case four years ago. (Astor and Stevens, 6/29)

For anti-abortion activists, Monday’s Supreme Court ruling against a Louisiana law delivered a stinging and surprising setback. But perhaps not for long. The anti-abortion movement has a long pipeline of new cases that, if taken up by the Supreme Court, could present a more direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established federal protection for abortion. As of June, there were at least 16 abortion cases before United States appeals courts, the last step before the Supreme Court, according to lawyers at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. (Tavernise and Dias, 6/29)

Every Supreme Court decision seems to confirm Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s pivotal role at the center of the court, and Monday’s ruling on abortion showed that restrictions on a woman’s right to the procedure for now will go only as far as the chief justice allows. In a remarkable stretch of decisions over the past two weeks, Roberts has dismayed conservatives and the Trump administration by finding that federal anti-discrimination law protects gay, bisexual and transgender workers and stopping the president from ending the federal program that protects undocumented immigrants brought here as children. (Barnes, 6/29)

In other news on abortion —

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Monday signed into law a bill that requires women to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion, trying again to institute a restriction similar to one struck down two years ago by the Iowa Supreme Court. Reynolds signed the measure into law just after lawyers representing Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and the state wrapped up arguments before a state court judge. The court must now decide whether to halt immediately enforcement of the new law, which is set to take effect Wednesday. (Pitt, 6/30)