últimas notícias

The court’s two most recent precedents on abortion, she said, allowed courts to consider “the law as a whole and its deterrent effect.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who had been in the majority in September, said he did not see how the Supreme Court could allow suits against clerks in state courts.

“A clerk performs a ministerial function,” he said. “Somebody shows up with a complaint, wants to file a complaint, and assuming the formal requirements are met, the clerk files the complaint. The clerk doesn’t have the authority to say, you can’t file this complaint because it’s a bad complaint.”

The four justices who dissented in September — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — did not seem to have changed their minds about the law. And Justices Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch asked questions that suggested they thought the federal courts had no role to play.

The law allows private citizens to file suits in state courts against doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure and even drivers who take a patient to a clinic. Such plaintiffs, who do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, are entitled to at least $10,000 and their legal fees if they win.

Chief Justice Roberts asked a telling question.

“Assume that the bounty is not $10,000 but a million dollars,” Chief Justice Roberts said, adding, “Do you think in that case the chill on the conduct at issue here would be sufficient to allow federal court review prior to the end of the state court process?”

Mr. Stone said no. That answer did not seem to satisfy the chief justice.

“Nobody is going to risk violating the statute,” he said, “because they’ll be subject to suit for a million dollars.”