''Garza v. Hargan'' (''Azar v. Garza'' after

Alex Azar Alex Michael Azar II (; born June 17, 1967) is an American attorney, businessman, lobbyist, and former pharmaceutical executive who served as the United States secretary of health and human services from 2018 to 2021. Azar was nominated to his p ...

's confirmation as

United States Secretary of Health and Human Services The United States secretary of health and human services is the head of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all health matters. The secretary is ...

) is a case before the

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. federal appellate cou ...

regarding a juvenile

undocumented immigrant Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwa ...

in the custody of

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...

who sought to have an

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pregn ...

Background

In early September 2017, a seventeen-year-old

Jane Doe John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are ofte ...

, was apprehended after illegally crossing the

Mexico–United States border The Mexico–United States border ( es, frontera Estados Unidos–México) is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traver ...

into

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. As an unaccompanied minor, Jane was placed into care of the

Office of Refugee Resettlement The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is a program of the Administration for Children and Families, an office within the United States Department of Health and Human Services, created with the passing of the United States Refugee Act of 1980 ( ...

. Jane, who was then eight weeks pregnant, was sent to an ORR funded shelter where she decided to have an abortion. A Texas judge granted Jane a judicial bypass to the state's

parental consent Parental consent laws (also known as parental involvement laws) in some countries require that one or more parents consent to or be notified before their minor child can legally engage in certain activities. Parental consent may refer to: *A pa ...

law and allowed her to seek an abortion on September 25, 2017. The ORR refused to allow Jane to leave the shelter to have her abortion. In March 2017, new ORR Director Scott Lloyd had forbid federally funded shelters from taking "any action that facilitates" an abortion without his express approval. Jane's

guardian ad litem A legal guardian is a person who has been appointed by a court or otherwise has the legal authority (and the corresponding duty) to make decisions relevant to the personal and property interests of another person who is deemed incompetent, calle ...

, Rochelle Garza, then sued the Acting

, Eric Hargan, in the

United States District Court for the District of Columbia The United States District Court for the District of Columbia (in case citations, D.D.C.) is a federal district court in the District of Columbia. It also occasionally handles (jointly with the United States District Court for the District of ...

, alleging that the government was violating Jane's constitutional right to an

abortion in the United States Abortion in the United States and its territories is a divisive issue in American politics and culture wars, with widely different abortion laws in U.S. states. Since 1976, the Republican Party has generally sought to restrict abortion ac ...

. On October 18, 2017, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan granted Jane's request for a

temporary restraining order An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in par ...

, ordering the government to allow Jane to leave the shelter to attend the pre-abortion counseling required by Texas law and to undergo the abortion. On October 20, a panel of the

granted the government's emergency motion to

stay Stay may refer to: Places * Stay, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the US Law * Stay of execution, a ruling to temporarily suspend the enforcement of a court judgment * Stay of proceedings, a ruling halting further legal process in a tri ...

Judge Chutkan's order. In an unsigned order by Circuit Judges

Brett Kavanaugh Brett Michael Kavanaugh ( ; born February 12, 1965) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since Oc ...

and

Karen L. Henderson Karen LeCraft Henderson (born July 11, 1944) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and a former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Distric ...

, the court allowed ORR to keep Jane from leaving its shelter to undergo an abortion until October 31, provided that the government "expeditiously" placed Jane in an outside sponsor's custody. Circuit Judge

Patricia Millett Patricia Ann Millett (; born September 1963) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She formerly headed the Supreme Court practice at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Fel ...

wrote a dissent in which she argued the majority was imposing an undue burden on abortion in violation of ''

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt ''Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt'', 579 U.S. 582 (2016), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court decided on June 27, 2016. The Court ruled 5–3 that Texas cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create a ...

'' (2016). On October 24, the full ''

en banc In law, an en banc session (; French for "in bench"; also known as ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank'') is a session in which a case is heard before all the judges of a court (before the entire bench) rather than by one judge or a smaller ...

'' D.C. Circuit reversed the panel majority, reimposing the district court order requiring the government to grant Jane access to an abortion. Judge Millet added a concurrence reiterating the arguments in her earlier dissent. Judge Henderson dissented, arguing that an undocumented immigrant is not a "person" under the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven ar ...

and so does not have rights under the

Due Process Clause In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as ...

. Judge Kavanaugh, joined by Judges Henderson and

Thomas B. Griffith Thomas Beall Griffith (born July 5, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist who was a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2005 to 2020. Griffith was Senate Legal Counsel, the chief legal o ...

, dissented, defending the panel decision. That day, District Judge Chutkan amended her order to allow Jane's abortion to proceed "promptly and without delay". Jane had her pregnancy aborted on October 25.

Supreme Court

On November 3, 2017, the

Solicitor General of the United States The solicitor general of the United States is the fourth-highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice. Elizabeth Prelogar has been serving in the role since October 28, 2021. The United States solicitor general represent ...

, Noel Francisco, petitioned the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

for a writ of

certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of an English prerogative writ, issued by a superior court to direct that the record of ...

to vacate the D.C. Circuit's ruling and moved for sanctions against Jane's lawyers at the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

. Francisco accused

David D. Cole David D. Cole is the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Before joining the ACLU in July 2016, Cole was the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Georgetown University Law Center from ...

of professional misconduct for not informing the Justice Department that Jane's abortion procedure had been rescheduled to earlier than anticipated. According to Francisco, this wrongfully prevented the government from seeking an emergency order from the Supreme Court blocking the procedure. On June 4, 2018, the Supreme Court granted review and

vacated A vacated judgment (also known as vacatur relief) makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court, which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court. ...

the judgment on the ground that the claim for

injunctive relief An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in pa ...

granted by the lower court had become

moot Moot may refer to: * Mootness, in American law: a point where further proceedings have lost practical significance; whereas in British law: the issue remains debatable * Moot court, an activity in many law schools where participants take part in s ...

when the girl followed through with the abortion. Vacating the lower court decision prevents it from having any value as

precedent A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great valu ...

. The Court did not grant the government's request for sanctions against Jane's attorneys. The opinion was unsigned.

Related developments

On December 18, 2017, Judge Chutkan granted relief to two additional pregnant girls in ORR care who had sued for access to an abortion. On March 30, 2018, Judge Chutkan certified the pregnant girls' lawsuit as a

class action A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class actio ...

and ordered the government to provide access to abortions to all girls in ORR's custody.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Case page
at

SCOTUSblog ''SCOTUSblog'' is a law blog written by lawyers, law professors, and law students about the Supreme Court of the United States (sometimes abbreviated "SCOTUS"). Formerly sponsored by Bloomberg Law, the site tracks cases before the Court from t ...

Case page
at the

United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court 2018 in United States case law United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit cases United States abortion case law American Civil Liberties Union litigation Immigration policy of Donald Trump

Background

Supreme Court

Related developments

Further reading

References

External links