Chief Justice Roberts joins the 4 liberal Justices to block a new Louisiana law that would have left the state with only one abortion clinic.

The NYT reports.

The court’s brief order gave no reasons, and its action — a temporary stay — did not end the case. The court is likely to hear a challenge to the law on the merits in its next term, which starts in October....

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they would have denied the stay. Only Justice Kavanaugh published a dissent, taking a middle position that acknowledged the key precedent and said he would have preferred more information on the precise effect of the law....

The Louisiana law is about requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges in nearby hospitals, and the constitutional question is whether that puts an "undue burden" on the right to have an abortion. Kavanaugh's idea is that if the law is allowed to go into effect it will create evidence of how difficult it really is for doctors to get the admitting privileges, which would put the Court in a better position to assess whether there's an "undue burden."

Here's Kavanaugh's opinion. Excerpt:

[E]ven without a stay, the status quo will be effectively preserved for all parties during the State’s 45-day regulatory transition period. I would deny the stay without prejudice to the plaintiffs’ ability to bring a later as-applied complaint and motion for preliminary injunction at the conclusion of the 45-day regulatory transition period if the Fifth Circuit’s factual prediction about the doctors’ ability to obtain admitting privileges proves to be inaccurate....

The law has not yet taken effect, so the case comes to us in the context of a pre-enforcement facial challenge. That means that the parties have offered, in essence, competing predictions about whether those three doctors can obtain admitting privileges....

Before us, the case largely turns on the intensely factual question whether the three doctors—Doe 2, Doe 5, and Doe 6—can obtain admitting privileges. If we denied the stay, that question could be readily and quickly answered without disturbing the status quo or causing harm to the parties or the affected women, and without this Court’s further involvement at this time.... [D]uring the 45-day transition period, both the doctors and the relevant hospitals could act expeditiously and in good faith to reach a definitive conclusion about whether those three doctors can obtain admitting privileges....

Most of the news reports concentrate on John Roberts. I don't find his vote surprising at all. I've observed throughout my years as a law professor that the Court has a center, a powerful position to occupy, and it won't stay empty. Someone (or 2) will always move into it. There will be a lot of talk about whether the new centrist moved into the center or whether the other Justices in his/her wing of the Court got more extreme, creating the appearance that sticking to the same place caused the new centrist to be in the center. It's the mystery of centrism. Contemplate it or take my word for it, but John Roberts is obviously destined to be the man in the middle.