Sixth Circuit Blog

Supreme Court Denies Cert. in Exclusionary Rule Case

In its Orders issued today, the Supreme Court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari to the Sixth Circuit In McClain v. United States, Case No. 06-160, presenting the question whether evidence may be used in a criminal case if police obtained the evidence based on a warrant that had relied, in turn, on evidence gathered in an earlier, illegal search.  The Sixth Circuit had held the evidence was admissible under a "good faith" exception to the exclusionary rule even if the evidence was obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Sixth Circuit Strikes Down Ohio Law Restricting Minors' Judicial Petitions for Abortions

The Sixth Circuit today declared facially unconstitutional the "single-petition rule" set forth in ORC 2919.121(C) -- enacted by Ohio House Bill 421 in 1998 -- that limits minors seeking a judicial bypass of the statutory parental-consent requirement to one petition per pregnancy.

If a state requires parental consent before an unemancipated minor may undergo an abortion, the Supreme Court requires the state to provide a judicial or administrative procedure so that the minor woman may bypass the consent requirement upon satisfying certain conditions.  See Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622, 643-51 (1979);  Lambert v. Wicklund, 520 U.S. 292, 295 (1997).

In Cincinnati Women's Services v. Taft, Case No. 05-4174, a panel comprised of Circuit Judges Cole, Gibbons and Rogers held that Ohio's "single-petition rule" constitutes an undue burden under the large-fraction test of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 878, 894-95 (1992).  But the Court upheld the "in-person rule" requiring women seeking abortions to attend an in-person meeting with a physician, for informed-consent purposes, at least 24 hours prior to receiving the abortion.

Thanks to Howard Bashman's How Appealing for posting on the case here.  The State of Ohio's brief in the case can be found here.