ATLANTA — Attorneys debating Georgia's stalled anti-abortion law have through the end of the day Friday to file documents arguing their case to a panel of federal appeals judges after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month.
Within hours of the Supreme Court's decision in a case challenging a restrictive abortion law in Mississippi reversed the 1973 ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers they had 21 days to file legal briefs that "address the effect, if any, the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization has on" on the Georgia law.
The court issued the order about an hour after Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed paperwork asking the judges to allow the state's law to go into effect.
Reproductive rights groups and abortion providers sued Georgia in 2019 after the Legislature passed an abortion law outlawing the procedure in most cases once a doctor can detect fetal cardiac activity, typically about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.
The challenge to Georgia's law has been pending before a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Atlanta. In September, the panel put the case on hold, deciding to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Mississippi case that was just decided.
Once attorneys file the briefs, the federal appeals court could uphold Georgia's anti-abortion law or the three-judge panel could return the case to U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in Atlanta, who struck down the Georgia statute in 2020, with instructions to uphold it.
