Whole Woman's Health v. Cole

• Decision Date: 09 June 2015
• Docket Number: No. 14–50928.,14–50928.
• Citation: 790 F.3d 563
• Parties: WHOLE WOMAN'S HEALTH; Austin Women's Health Center ; Killeen Women's Health Center ; Nova Health Systems, doing business as Reproductive Services; Sherwood C. Lynn, Jr., M.D., on behalf of themselves and their patients; Pamela J. Richter, D.O., on behalf of themselves and their patients; Lendol L. Davis, M.D., on behalf of themselves and their patients, Plaintiffs–Appellees–Cross–Appellants v. Kirk COLE, M.D., Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, in his Official Capacity; Mari Robinson, Executive Director of the Texas Medical Board, in her Official Capacity, Defendants–Appellants–Cross–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

790 F.3d 563

WHOLE WOMAN'S HEALTH; Austin Women's Health Center ; Killeen Women's Health Center ; Nova Health Systems, doing business as Reproductive Services; Sherwood C. Lynn, Jr., M.D., on behalf of themselves and their patients; Pamela J. Richter, D.O., on behalf of themselves and their patients; Lendol L. Davis, M.D., on behalf of themselves and their patients, Plaintiffs–Appellees–Cross–Appellants

v.Kirk COLE, M.D., Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, in his Official Capacity; Mari Robinson, Executive Director of the Texas Medical Board, in her Official Capacity, Defendants–Appellants–Cross–Appellees.

No. 14–50928.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

June 9, 2015.

Stephanie Toti, Esq. (argued), Staff Attorney, David Patrick Brown, Center For Reproductive Rights U.S. Legal Program, Esha Bhandari, Center for Reproductive Rights Immigrants Rights Project, Joseph Alexander Lawrence, Esq., Morrison & Foerster, L.L.P., New York, N.Y., Betre Mussie Gizaw, Morrison & Foerster, Washington, DC, Patrick J. O'Connell, Jan Soifer, O'Connell & Soifer, L.L.P., Austin, TX, for Plaintiffs–Appellees Cross–Appellants.

Scott A. Keller, Solicitor, Jonathan F. Mitchell, Beth Ellen Klusmann, Esq., Michael P. Murphy, Andrew S. Oldham, Deputy General Counsel, Office of the Attorney General, Office of the Solicitor General, James Davis Blacklock, Senior Counsel, Office of the Attorney General, Executive Administration, Austin, TX, for Defendants–Appellants Cross–Appellees.

Walter Martin Weber, Stuart J. Roth, American Center for Law & Justice, Mailee Rebecca Smith, Esq., Americans United for Life, Steven H. Aden, Catherine Glenn Foster, Alliance Defending Freedom, Lawrence John Joseph, Carrie Yvette Flaxman, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Kimberly A. Parker, WilmerHale, Washington, DC, CeCe Heil, Jay A. Sekulow, Esq., American Center for Law & Justice, Virginia Beach, VA, Michael J. Norton, Natalie Lynn Decker, Alliance Defending Freedom, Greenwood Village, CO, Stephen Daniel Casey, Esq., Attorney, Casey Law Office, P.C., Round Rock, TX, Catherine Wynne Short, Life Legal Defense Foundation, Ojai, CA, Gregory R. Terra, Texas Center for Defense of Life, Georgetown, TX, Allan Edward Parker, Jr., Justice Foundation, San Antonio, TX, for Amicus Curiae.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.

Before PRADO, ELROD, and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.

Opinion

PER CURIAM:

Plaintiffs, Texas abortion providers, sued State of Texas officials (“the State”)¹ seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the enforcement of recent amendments to Texas's law regulating abortions. See 2013 Texas House Bill No. 2 (“H.B. 2”).² Plaintiffs challenge H.B. 2's physician admitting privileges requirement as applied to a McAllen and an El Paso abortion facility. Plaintiffs also challenge H.B. 2's requirement that abortion facilities satisfy the standards set for ambulatory surgical centers facially and as applied to the McAllen and El Paso abortion facilities.

The district court enjoined enforcement of both requirements “as applied to all women seeking a previability abortion, ” and as applied to the McAllen and El Paso abortion facilities. Whole Woman's Health v. Lakey, 46 F.Supp.3d 673, 676 (W.D.Tex.2014) (emphasis added). The State appeals the entry of declaratory and injunctive relief.³ Plaintiffs cross-appeal the dismissal of their additional equal-protection and unlawful-delegation claims.

After carefully considering the record in light of the parties' extensive written and oral arguments, we AFFIRM the district court's dismissal of the Plaintiffs' equal-protection and unlawful-delegation claims, AFFIRM in part and MODIFY in part the district court's injunction of the admitting privileges and ASC requirements as applied to McAllen, VACATE the district court's injunction of the admitting privileges requirement as applied to “all women seeking a previability abortion,” and REVERSE the district court's facial injunction of the ASC requirement, injunction of the ASC requirement in the context of medication abortion, and injunction of the admitting privileges and ASC requirements as applied to El Paso.

In plain terms, H.B. 2 and its provisions may be applied throughout Texas, except that Supreme Court precedent requires us to partially uphold the district court's injunction of the ASC requirement as applied to the Whole Woman's Health abortion facility in McAllen, Texas, and to uphold the district court's injunction of the admitting privileges requirement as applied to Dr. Lynn when he is working at the McAllen facility.

I. Jurisprudential Background

So that our decision may benefit from a full understanding of the pertinent historical and jurisprudential context, we begin by reviewing the regulation of abortion and related Supreme Court cases.

A. Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court's modern abortion jurisprudence began in 1973 with the landmark case Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973). As with the case before us, Roe dealt with a challenge to Texas's regulation of abortion. Texas's penal code made it a crime punishable by imprisonment to procure or attempt to procure an abortion unless medically necessary to save the life of the mother. Id. at 117–18 & n. 1, 93 S.Ct. 705. Unlike the law presently challenged, the Texas law was not of recent vintage. First enacted in 1854 with few substantial modifications, it was a century old at the time of Roe. See id. at 116, 119, 93 S.Ct. 705. Nor was Texas's law unique; a majority of the states had similar laws. See id. at 116, 118 & n. 2, 93 S.Ct. 705.

Reviewing Texas's statute against a backdrop of varying state regulations of abortion, Roe assessed the states' interests in regulating abortion, acknowledging a legitimate interest in women's health:

The State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient. This interest obviously extends at least to the performing physician and his staff, to the facilities involved, to the availability of after-care, and to adequate provision for any complication or emergency that might arise.

Id. at 150, 93 S.Ct. 705. The Court likewise credited an interest in protecting potential life: “as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone.” Id.

Most significantly, however, the Court recognized a constitutional right of privacy “broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Id. at 153, 93 S.Ct. 705. While “[t]he Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy,” id. at 152, 93 S.Ct. 705, the Court relied on its cases recognizing a right of personal privacy in other contexts, which it found to be rooted in the “Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action,” id. at 153, 93 S.Ct. 705.

Considering these competing concepts, the Court “conclude[d] that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.” Id. at 154, 93 S.Ct. 705. It thus fashioned a constitutional framework that conditioned the states' ability to regulate abortion on a fetus's viability. It held that states may not proscribe abortion prior to viability—the point at which “the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb.” Id. at 163, 93 S.Ct. 705. After viability, generally at the end of the second trimester, states could proscribe or regulate abortion except when an abortion was necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. Id. at 163–64, 93 S.Ct. 705. The Court drew this line because it believed the interest in potential life to be compelling only after viability. See id. at 163, 93 S.Ct. 705.

The Court drew a second line at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. During the first trimester, states were precluded from interfering with a woman's choice to obtain an abortion. Id. From the beginning of the second trimester onward, Roe held that “a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health.” Id. “Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like.” Id. The Court drew this line because it believed the interest in the health of the mother became compelling only after the first trimester. See id. (crediting evidence “that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth”). Measured against Roe's framework, Texas's law proscribing abortion at all stages of pregnancy was held unconstitutional. Id. at 166, 93 S.Ct. 705.

B. The Supreme Court's Review of Abortion Regulations Following Roe

In the approximately twenty-year period following Roe, it became a regular practice of the Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of state abortion regulations. Roe was explicitly reaffirmed twice during this period, see Thornburgh v. Am. Coll. of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 759, 106 S.Ct. 2169, 90 L.Ed.2d 779 (1986) ; Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reprod. Health, Inc. (Akron I ), 462 U.S. 416, 420, 103 S.Ct. 2481, 76 L.Ed.2d 687 (1983), before its framework was modified in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992). Because Roe allowed regulations during the second trimester that were “reasonably related to...