3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JUNE 27, 2016
Supreme Court strikes down
Texas abortion clinic regulations
Education board puts
lead, radon testing
rules on the fast track
Justices voted
5-3 in favor of
Texas clinics
Requirement
could be inalized
this August
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
WASHINGTON — The
Supreme Court struck down
Texas’ widely replicated regula-
tion of abortion clinics Monday
in the court’s biggest abortion
case in nearly a quarter century.
The justices voted 5-3 in
favor of Texas clinics that had
argued the regulations were
only a veiled attempt to make
it harder for women to get
abortions in the nation’s sec-
ond-most populous state.
Justice Stephen Breyer’s
majority opinion for the court
held that the regulations are
medically unnecessary and
unconstitutionally limit a wom-
an’s right to an abortion.
Texas had argued that its
2013 law and subsequent reg-
ulations were needed to pro-
tect women’s health. The rules
required doctors who perform
abortions to have admitting
privileges at nearby hospitals
and forced clinics to meet hospi-
tal-like standards for outpatient
surgery.
Breyer wrote that “the sur-
gical-center requirement, like
the admitting privileges require-
ment, provides few, if any, health
beneits for women, poses a sub-
stantial obstacle to women seek-
ing abortions and constitutes an
‘undue burden’ on their consti-
tutional right to do so.”
Justices Anthony Kennedy,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan
joined Breyer.
Ginsburg wrote a short
opinion noting that laws like
Texas’ “that do little or noth-
ing for health, but rather strew
impediments to abortion, can-
not survive judicial inspec-
tion” under the court’s earlier
abortion-rights decisions. She
pointed speciically to Roe v.
Wade in 1973 and Planned Par-
enthood v. Casey in 1992.
Chief Justice John Roberts
and Justices Samuel Alito and
Clarence Thomas dissented.
Thomas wrote that the deci-
sion “exempliies the court’s
troubling tendency ‘to bend the
rules when any effort to limit
abortion, or even to speak in
opposition to abortion, is at
issue.”’ Thomas was quoting
an earlier abortion dissent from
Justice Antonin Scalia, who
died in February. Scalia has not
The Oregon Board of
Education is fast-tracking
adoption of a new rule that
requires schools to test for
lead and radon and report
those results to the public.
The rule came on the
heels of a scandal in Portland
Public Schools over lead
in drinking water that went
unreported, and a directive
by Gov. Kate Brown.
“I think an additional
layer of checks and balances
when we are talking about
student safety so I think this
will make parents feel much
better,” said Board Chair-
woman Miranda Summer.
The board heard a irst
reading of the rule Thursday
and plans a public hearing —
and potential adoption — in
August.
The requirement will entail
additional costs to schools and
the state Department of Edu-
cation. The Legislative Fiscal
Ofice is working on an esti-
mate on what those costs will
be. Legislative leadership has
asked the Emergency Board
to allocate money to pay for it.
Brown in April directed
the Department of Education
and Oregon Health Authority
to review existing require-
ments for environmental test-
ing and address the problem
of lead in drinking water.
During the review, health
and education oficials learned
that neither the education
department nor the health
authority has the power to
require schools test for lead,
said Emily Nazarov, operations
policy analyst with the educa-
tion department’s government
and legal affairs section.
The health authority has
authority to require testing
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Bethany Van Kampen, left, hugs Alejandra Pablus as thet celebrate during a rally at the
Supreme Court in Washington, Monday,, after the court struck down Texas’ widely repli-
cated regulation of abortion clinics.
yet been replaced, so only eight
justices voted.
Alito, reading a summary of
his dissent in court, said the clin-
ics should have lost on techni-
cal, procedural grounds. Alito
said the court was adopting a
rule of, “If at irst you don’t suc-
ceed, sue, sue again.”
Abortion providers said the
rules would have cut the num-
Nancy Northup, president
of the Center for Reproduc-
tive Rights, which represented
the clinics, said, “The Supreme
Court sent a loud and clear mes-
sage that politicians cannot use
deceptive means to shut down
abortion clinics.”
Democratic presidential can-
didate Hillary Clinton called the
decision “a victory for women
The law ‘was an effort
to improve minimum
safety standards and
ensure capable care
for Texas women.’
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
ber of abortion clinics in Texas
by three-fourths if they had been
allowed to take full effect.
When then-Gov. Rick Perry
signed the law in 2013, there
were about 40 clinics through-
out the state. That number
dropped to under 20 and would
have been cut in half again if
the law had taken full effect, the
clinics said.
Texas Attorney General
Ken Paxton said the law “was
an effort to improve minimum
safety standards and ensure
capable care for Texas women.
It’s exceedingly unfortunate
that the court has taken the abil-
ity to protect women’s health
out of the hands of Texas cit-
izens and their duly elected
representatives.”
in Texas and across America.”
Texas is among 10 states
with similar admitting-priv-
ileges requirements, accord-
ing to the Center for Reproduc-
tive Rights. The requirement is
in effect in most of Texas, Mis-
souri, North Dakota and Ten-
nessee. It is on hold in Alabama,
Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
The hospital-like outpatient
surgery standards are in place
in Michigan, Missouri, Penn-
sylvania and Virginia, and it is
blocked in Tennessee and Texas,
according to the center.
Texas passed a broad bill
imposing several abortion
restrictions in 2013. Texas clin-
ics sued immediately to block
it, contending it impermissibly
interfered with a woman’s con-
stitutional right to an abortion.
The clinics won several favor-
able rulings in a federal district
court in Texas. But each time,
the New Orleans-based 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals sided
with the state, at irst allowing
challenged provisions to take
effect and then upholding the
law with only slight exceptions.
The Supreme Court had
allowed the admitting-privi-
leges requirement to take effect
in most of the state, but put the
surgical center provision on
hold pending the court’s resolu-
tion of the case.
The justices split largely
along liberal-conservative lines
in their emergency orders, with
the court’s conservative justices
voting repeatedly to let the law
be enforced.
Separate lawsuits are pend-
ing over admitting-privileges
laws in Louisiana and Missis-
sippi, the other states covered by
the 5th circuit. The laws are on
hold in both states, and a panel
of federal appellate judges has
concluded the Mississippi law
probably is unconstitutional
because it would force the only
abortion clinic in the state to
close.
A separate appeal is pend-
ing at the Supreme Court from
Wisconsin, where federal judges
have struck down that state’s
admitting-privileges law.
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of public water systems, but
schools are excluded from
the agency’s jurisdiction.
The proposed rule would
require school districts, char-
ter schools and education ser-
vices districts to conduct lead
and radon testing and to sub-
mit an environmental moni-
toring plan to the Department
of Education for keeping
water, air and physical spaces
safe for students and staff.
The health authority
already had authority to require
schools to test for radon, but
the new rule will provide com-
prehensive guidance to schools
on all of the testing required.
Schools will be required to
report their test results to the
education department and to
the community annually.
School Board Member
Samuel Henry said if the
Legislature doesn’t approve
additional funding for imple-
menting the rule it could be
another one of those “famous
unfunded mandates.”
The agencies asked
schools to test for lead during
the summer. All of the dis-
tricts have either completed
or are in the process of test-
ing, Nazarov said. The agen-
cies recommend that schools
identify sources of lead, stop
access, communicate results
to staff, students, parents and
the community and mitigate
and repair the problem.
“Districts are doing a lot
of this already,” Nazarov said.
“Portland (Public Schools)
mentioned at one of the meet-
ings one of their learning
points is make sure you are
documenting this. Repairs are
done. People leave organiza-
tions, and nobody knows that
the repair was done or when it
was done, and that information
is lost. This is a way to make
sure there is a record that the
community has access to and
that that info is available.”
The Capital Bureau is a
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Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
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