Store Neal Devin's a professor at William and Mary law school And analysis of important legal issues cases in headline Is this essentially the 5th circuit haunting He has presided over a so called hot bench at the Supreme Court Bloomberg law with June Grasso from Bloomberg radio Welcome to a special edition of Bloomberg law I'm June grosso ahead in this hour the Supreme Court 2021 The decisions on ObamaCare gay rights voting rights student athletes and free speech and the decisions that are yet to come involving hot button issues like abortion and guns Plus the shadow docket It's the most consequential reproductive rights case in a generation and promises to be the most controversial case of the current Supreme Court term The court is considering Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and cutting back or reversing roe V wade the landmark case that has guaranteed abortion rights in this country for nearly 50 years During oral arguments the conservative justices and the liberal justice is where on opposite sides of the question about the precedential value of row Here are justices Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh Will this institution survive the stench that this creates In the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts I don't see how it is possible Why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress the state legislatures States Supreme courts the people being able to resolve this And they'll be different answers in Mississippi in New York Joining me for this hour are Bloomberg new Supreme Court reporter Greg store and Bloomberg law Supreme Court reporter Kimberly strawbridge Robinson Welcome both of you Greg I was surprised during the oral arguments that the conservative justices talk so openly about implying the possibility of reversing row when just last June the court struck down a Louisiana law that restricted abortion rights June you weren't the only one who was surprised Really all the questions from the conservative group at least the non John Roberts conservative side of the court were suggesting that the court was indeed seriously considering overruling roe V wade and the 1992 Planned Parenthood versus Casey decision I think part of that was because the abortion right side in this case in a sense is going for broke They did not try to offer the court any sort of so called narrow way of deciding the case Any way where the court might say uphold the Mississippi 15 week ban without overturning row The abortion rights lawyers and the Biden administration were very upfront in saying if you uphold this law you are effectively overturning rope and there's really no other line you can create to replace the line that they earlier decisions headset Kimberly did it seem as if all the conservative justices were on board with that or were there some that might be outliers So for me June the three justices that I were watching going into these arguments were chief justice Roberts and justice Kavanaugh and Barrett And great release suggested it really only seemed like chief justice Roberts was trying to find this middle ground I mean when I looked at really what justices Kavanaugh and Barrett were saying it looked like they were arguments to outright overturn roe And so the clip you play talked about from justice Kavanaugh talked about if the constitution and his view doesn't speak precisely to whether or not abortion is a right guaranteed by the constitution will then shouldn't the court stay out of it and leave it up to the states And for justice barret for her part she was really looking at how roe versus wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey really balance the interests between the states interest in protecting potential life with a woman's right to choose And she suggested that the burdens on women weren't as strong as row and Casey had made them out to be At least not anymore And she pointed specifically to the safe harbor laws that allow women to turn over their children after birth And she suggested that that really alleviates some of the burdens of force parenthood And so I think from my mind coming out of those arguments they're really only one justice in the middle and I don't think that his view is really going to prevail here The court has already ruled in a case over the strictest abortion law in the country SBA the Texas abortion law It was a limited ruling where the court left that law enforce Greg is that bad news for abortion rights advocates It sure seems that way This law can not be squared with or Casey Far stricter than anything the Supreme Court has allowed previously and the fact that the court was willing to let it stay in effect And in fact let it go into effect back in September Surely says something important The challenge to the law by the providers can go forward but only in a very limited form The problem with this law which delegates enforcement power to private individuals is that structure makes it hard for a plaintiff or a court to know who it is that can be enjoying to block the law from having an effect And so the plaintiff with the help of the Justice Department basically tried to sue everybody they could to try to get that sort of an injunction and what the Supreme Court said was hey there's only a few state officials you can sue and after the ruling came out the abortion right side a conference call with reporters where they said basically this is not a way we can block the law Those that narrow path the court left open for us is not good enough to get us the kind of injunction that we need to actually block this law and let abortions broadly resume in Texas and surely the Supreme Court was aware that this is only a very narrow path And to get back to your question that can not be a good sign for the future of rowing Casey Coming up next on Bloomberg law I'll continue this conversation with Kimberly strawbridge Robinson and Greg store will discuss whether the Supreme Court will okay that carrying of handguns in public I'm June Rosso.