If Roe falls, some fear ripple effect on civil rights cases

If the Supreme Court decides to overturn or gut the decision that legalized abortion, some fear that it could undermine other precedent-setting cases, including civil rights and LGBTQ protections.

Overturning Roe v. Wade would have a bigger effect than most cases because it was reaffirmed by a second decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, three decades later, legal scholars and advocates said. The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled in arguments last week they would allow states to ban abortion much earlier in pregnancy and may even overturn the nationwide right that has existed for nearly 50 years. A decision is expected next summer.

“If a case like Roe, which has this double precedent value, is overturned simply because there’s a change in the composition of the court, there’s really no way that we can have confidence in any of those precedents going forward,” said Samuel Spital, director of litigation at the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund.

Anti-abortion advocates and legal scholars, meanwhile, argue that the Roe decision was unique, both in its legal reasoning and effects, and so overturning it wouldn't affect other landmark cases.

“In Roe, I think you have really just a particularly bad decision,” said Erin Hawley, senior appellate counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group. She did not expect a Supreme Court decision against Roe to affect landmark cases that legalized same-sex marriage and LGBTQ intimacy.

Other experts disagree. Alison Gash, a professor at the University of Oregon, said Obergefell v. Hodges, which made same-sex marriage legal, and Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned laws which criminalized same-sex intimate relationships, rest on the same legal precedent.

“Literally the logic that allows for a woman to argue that...