Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said other judges 'opted to bury their heads in the sand' as new Texas anti-abortion law turns citizens into 'bounty hunters'

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor sits during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23, 2021.
Erin Schaff/AFP/Getty Images

Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a strong dissent to a 5-4 decision allowing a new Texas abortion ban.
"A majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand," she wrote.
"In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the State's citizens as bounty hunters," she added.
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The Supreme Court declined overnight to block a new Texas law that prohibits abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy, and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor had some choice words for her fellow judges in a fiery dissent to the 5-4 decision.

"The Court's order is stunning," she said at the start of her dissent. "Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand."

The new Texas law, which took effect on Wednesday, is intended to be enforced by everyday citizens. People can sue a Texas abortion provider or anyone they believe is assisting someone getting an abortion beyond the six-week mark. Citizens can be rewarded $10,000 for a successful lawsuit.

That six-week threshold is before most women are even aware that they're pregnant, making it very difficult to obtain an abortion in Texas under the new law.

"In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the State's citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors' medical procedures," wrote Sotomayor. "Because the Court's failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent."

The 5-4 decision denied an "application for injunctive relief" for the new law, which would have blocked its implementation. Five of the court's conservative justices - Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas - voted in the majority, while conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts joined liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sotomayor in dissenting.

"Today, the Court finally tells the Nation that it declined to act because, in short, the State's gambit worked," Sotomayor wrote. "At a minimum, this Court should have stayed implementation of the Act to allow the lower courts to evaluate these issues in the normal course."

In their majority opinion, the five conservative justices said that they were not making a determination about whether the law was actually constitutional. "In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants' lawsuit," they wrote.

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