Mazurek v. Armstrong

Mazurek v. Armstrong
Supreme Court of the United States
Decided June 16, 1997
Full case name	Joseph P. Mazurek, Attorney General of Montana v. James H. Armstrong, et al.
Citations	520 U.S. 968 (more)
Case history
Prior	Preliminary injunction denied in relevant part sub nom. Armstrong v. Mazurek, 906 F. Supp. 561 (D. Mont. 1995); vacated and remanded, 94 F.3d 566 (9th Cir. 1996)
Holding
A Montana law that allows only physicians to perform abortions is constitutional because there is no evidence that it was intended to burden a woman's right to choose.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Per curiam
Dissent	Stevens, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Amend. XIV

Mazurek v. Armstrong, 520 U.S. 968 (1997), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a Montana law permitting only licensed physicians to perform abortions.^[1] The Court summarily reversed a ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had held that the law was likely intended to inhibit abortion access. In a per curiam opinion, a majority of the Court found that there was no evidence that the Montana legislature acted with an invalid intent. The Court also reiterated its earlier holding in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that the states have broad flexibility to regulate abortion so long as their regulations do not create an undue burden on a woman's right to choose. Three dissenting justices, in an opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, wrote that they would have declined to hear the case because proceedings were still pending in the lower courts. The law itself was later struck down by the Montana Supreme Court on state-constitutional grounds.