Gorsuch Grills Conservative Lawyer Arguing for Abortion Pill Restriction: ‘Counsel, Let Me Interrupt There’

EXCERPT:

GORSUCH: "Counsel, let me interrupt there. I’m sorry. I think Justice Jackson is saying, let’s spot you all that, okay, with respect to your clients. Normally, in Article III, traditional equitable remedies, we issue and we say over and over again, provide a remedy sufficient to address the plaintiffs’ asserted injuries and go no further. We have before us a handful of individuals who’ve asserted a conscience objection. Normally, we would allow equitable relief to address them. Recently, I think what Justice Jackson’s alluding to, we have had one might call it a rash of universal injunctions or vacatures, and this case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other federal government action. Thoughts?"
HAWLEY: "Yes, Your Honor. Again, I have to say that I think it’s impracticable to raise a conscience objection. But even spotting that, I think that the district court remedy here was perfectly appropriate under Section 705. Section 705 grants the reviewing courts the authority to issue all necessary and appropriate relief. And as the government acknowledged in oral argument in Corner Post, when the parties before the court are non-regulated parties, the only avenue in which they can possibly get relief, and of course that’s the sine qua non of equitable relief, is that the parties before the court get it, and that’s for, in this case, as a state issue, or in another case as a vacature. And that’s because, without that sort of relief, the very parties before the court won’t get it."

(Via Mediaite)