If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, will other 'legal dominoes' begin to fall?
Good morning, readers:
The nation anticipates with bated breath the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on the future of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision protecting the constitutional right to abortion. The decision will come any day now.
A draft opinion leaked to Politico a few weeks ago suggests a 5-4 majority will nullify Roe and leave laws on reproductive rights to the states. Several states, including Tennessee, have trigger laws that would effectively outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned.
Critics of the draft ruling worry that Roe may just be a start to overturning other controversial decisions on issues such as contraception access, interracial marriage and same-sex unions.
Constitutional expert John Vile, a professor of political science and dean at Middle Tennessee State University, recently wrote a guest opinion column on how the Supreme Court's decision could affect other precedents.
He reminds readers that when the Supreme Court voted to end segregation with the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the 1950s, the court "proceeded to issue numerous pathbreaking decisions related to state legislative apportionment and the rights of criminal defendants."
So, while Justice Samuel Alito, who penned the draft decision, wrote "Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion," Vile argues that abortion opponents may consider this "just the first of many legal dominoes to fall."
Scroll to read more commentary in this week's newsletter:
University of Memphis Ph.D. student McKinley Heard wonders about the true intentions of Tennessee lawmakers who have worked to restrict abortion access.
Vanderbilt University student Maddie Amberg encourages advocates of stricter gun law to join student-led protests in Nashville and elsewhere this Saturday in the wake of the massacres in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas, and elsewhere.
Krissy DeAlejandro, executive director of tnAchieves, and Randy Boyd, president of the University of Tennessee System, sound the alarm on the growing rate of high school students choosing not to go to college: "... the short-term gain they feel now with higher hourly wages may actually hurt opportunities for most students in the long run."
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee. Email him at dplazas@tennessean.com, call him at (615) 259-8063 or tweet to him at @davidplazas. Subscribe to a USA TODAY Network - Tennessee publication.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SCOTUS: Will other 'legal dominoes' fall if Roe v. Wade is overturned?