Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Majority — Alito

Joined by: Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority held that the right to abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution's text and is not "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition," noting that abortion was criminalized in most states both when the Constitution was adopted and when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. It concluded that Roe's reasoning was exceptionally weak, resembling legislation rather than constitutional interpretation, particularly its unexplained viability line and its flawed account of common-law history. Applying traditional stare decisis factors—the nature of the error, quality of reasoning, workability of the undue-burden test, distorting effects on other legal doctrines, and absence of concrete reliance interests—the majority found all five favored overruling Roe and Casey. In response to the dissent's argument that this threatens other unenumerated rights like contraception and same-sex marriage, the majority answered that abortion is "inherently different" because it involves the destruction of "potential life," a factor absent from those other precedents, and stated that nothing in the opinion casts doubt on non-abortion precedents.

Dissent reasoning

Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, dissenting jointly, argued that Roe and Casey correctly protected women's liberty and equality by giving them, not the government, control over the intensely personal and consequential decision whether to bear a child. They contended the majority's method—looking only to whether a right existed in 1868, when women could not vote and were not treated as full citizens—is illegitimate and would equally undermine rights to contraception, same-sex intimacy, and interracial or same-sex marriage, none of which existed in 1868 either. The dissent argued that no legal or factual changes justified overturning 50 years of precedent, that Casey's undue-burden standard was workable like many other legal standards, and that overwhelming reliance interests exist because generations of women have organized their lives, relationships, and careers around the availability of abortion. They warned the ruling would fall hardest on poor women unable to travel for care, and characterized the decision as an illegitimate exercise of raw judicial power driven solely by a change in the Court's membership rather than any change in law or fact.