Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting
them.
That means the Court may not overrule a decision, even a constitutional one, without a "special justification." Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. __, __ (2019) (slip op., at 11). Stare decisis is, of course, not an "inexorable command"; it is sometimes appropriate to overrule an earlier decision. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 233 (2009). But the Court must have a good reason to do so over and above the belief "that the precedent was wrongly decided." Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc., 573 U. S. 258, 266 (2014). "[I]t is not alone sufficient that we would decide a case differently now than we did then." Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455 (2015).
The majority today lists some 30 of our cases as overruling precedent, and argues that they support overruling Roe and Casey. But none does, as further described below and in the Appendix. See infra, at 61-66. In some, the Court only partially modified or clarified a precedent. And in the rest, the Court relied on one or more of the traditional stare decis is factors in reaching its conclusion. The Court found, for example, (1) a change in legal doctrine that undermined or made obsolete the earlier decision; (2) a factual change that had the same effect; or (3) an absence of reliance because the earlier decision was less than a decade old. (The majority is wrong when it says that we insist on a test of changed law or fact alone, although that is present in most of the cases. See ante, at 69.) None of those factors apply here: Nothing—and in particular, no significant legal or factual change—supports overturning a half-century of settled law giving women control over their reproductive lives.
First, for all the reasons we have given, Roe and Casey were correct. In holding that a State could not "resolve" the debate about abortion "in such a definitive way that a woman lacks all choice in the matter," the Court protected women's liberty and women's equality in a way comporting with our Fourteenth Amendment precedents. Casey, 505
