Justice Brown Jackson lone dissenter on vacating abortion ruling

She doesn't know what a woman is because she isn't a biologist, and evidently doesn't know what good parenting is because she is a flaming progressive. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson [I will only use her first name once] wrote the only SCOTUS dissent after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a federal court decision Monday that upheld a minor's right to go to court to get an abortion without her parents' consent.

The high court overturned the lower court ruling that said a state court clerk could be sued for denying a pregnant teen's request permission to get an abortion without her parents' consent. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot [i.e., subject to debate]. 

In her parent-neutralizing dissent, Jackson criticized the court's application of Munsingwear vacatur, a legal doctrine that addresses what should happen to a court decision when the appealed case becomes moot while it is pending review by a higher court. 

The doctrine states that such decisions should be vacated, with an important exception for cases where the party adversely affected by the vacated decision was not responsible for rendering the case moot.

Pro-Abortion Justice Jackson, who has already been born

"I am concerned that contemporary practice related to so called ‘Munsingwear vacaturs’ has drifted away from the doctrine's foundational moorings," Jackson wrote in her dissent. She is also concerned that parents have parental rights and generally know what's best for their child.

This case stemmed from a lawsuit in Missouri alleging that court clerk Michelle Chapman violated a 17-year-old pregnant teenager's rights by keeping her parents out of the affair. Missouri law requires a pregnant minor to obtain permission from her parents to have an abortion. In certain circumstances, the law allows a minor to get court permission to bypass parental consent but Chapman may have thought the teenager's parents may have known that an abortion would adversely affect their child in the future, or maybe her parents thought that all life is sacred.

When the teenager, referred to as Jane Doe, went to court in 2018 seeking permission to get an abortion, Chapman told her the court would have to notify her parents about the hearing. Doe instead traveled to Illinois, where she obtained court permission and later had her baby killed.

Chapman claimed immunity from the suit, but both a federal district court in Missouri and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit rejected her claim. However, the Supreme Court vacated the 8th Circuit's decision, agreeing with Chapman that the ruling should have been thrown out because the case was made moot by the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion.

In her dissent, Jackson argued that Munsingwear vacatur should only be extended to "extraordinary" or "exceptional" cases. She wrote that this case became moot when Chapman and the teenager agreed to have their original case in Missouri district court dismissed, asserting that "Chapman contributed to the mootness of this case insofar as she stipulated to its dismissal."

As such, Jackson said it was not unfair to deprive Chapman of her right to appeal. 

"Indeed, Chapman's only argument in support of vacatur is that the Eighth Circuit's opinion was wrongly decided. But mere disagreement with the decision that one seeks to have vacated cannot suffice to warrant equitable relief under Munsingwear," Jackson wrote.

"In my view, it is crucial that we hold the line and limit the availability of Munsingwear vacatur to truly exceptional cases," she insisted, calling Chapman's case, "far-from-exceptional."

"To do otherwise risks considerable damage to first principles of appellate review," she said.

Yes, lawful law, words, legal terms and all that, but a teenager, whose brain is not yet fully developed, should have to discuss this life-altering procedure with her parents.

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