(CBS NEWS) -- Washington — The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a pair of cases challenging a Texas law that bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, kicking off a consequential month for the high court that culminates with a case that abortion advocates warn is the biggest threat to reproductive rights in decades.
Arguments in the two Texas disputes — one brought by the Justice Department and a second from abortion providers in the state — spanned nearly three hours, during which several justices expressed concern that a range of constitutional rights could be under threat if the court accepts the Texas law's novel enforcement mechanism. The law allows private citizens, rather than state officials, to enforce the law through suits filed in state court, and critics of the measure argue that structure has insulated it from federal court review.
"We would be inviting states, all 50 of them, with respect to their unpreferred constitutional rights, to try to nullify the law that this court has laid down as to the content of those rights," Justice Elena Kagan told Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone during arguments in the dispute brought by the Justice Department. "That was something that until this law came around, no state dreamed of doing. Essentially we would be like, you're open for business. There's nothing the Supreme Court can do about it. Guns, same-sex marriage, religious rights. Whatever you don't like, go ahead."
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