When a pregnant, undocumented 17-yr-previous being in a federal refugee shelter in Texas sought an abortion in 2017, it was the career of Scott Stewart, then a Division of Justice attorney, to help protect the ultimatum issued by the Trump administration: go by way of with the being pregnant — or leave the region.
The lady experienced obtained a courtroom get making it possible for her to have the process, but the authorities was blocking her from leaving the shelter for the appointment. That decision, Mr. Stewart argued, did not make an undue load on the minor. “She can get aid with voluntary departure,” he argued.
A federal judge, declaring herself “astounded” by the argument, disagreed and requested the federal government to permit the insignificant to go via with the abortion.
Mr. Stewart now finds himself when once more at the centre of a higher-profile abortion circumstance, one particular that may perhaps direct to one particular of the most consequential rulings on reproductive rights in decades.
Mr. Stewart, who was appointed the solicitor common for Mississippi in February, on Wednesday will protect the state’s law prohibiting abortions following 15 months of pregnancy and immediately challenge Roe v. Wade and Prepared Parenthood v. Casey, both of which affirmed the suitable to abortion prior to fetal viability.
“Roe and Casey are egregiously completely wrong,” he wrote in the courtroom temporary. “The summary that abortion is a constitutional appropriate has no foundation in text, composition, record, or custom.”
Mr. Stewart graduated from Princeton University and researched legislation at Stanford. He clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and Decide Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He served in the U.S. Section of Justice’s Business of Authorized Counsel and worked in personal practice as a litigator. As deputy assistant lawyer general in the Civil Division of the Justice Office, he presented additional than 40 oral arguments in the federal courts of appeals.