The justices had already agreed in February to take up the issue in their next term. They were expected to hear that case, an appeal by the administration of a 2005 ruling by the federal appeals court in St. Louis, which declared the law unconstitutional, shortly after the term opens in October.
That argument is now likely to be postponed until November or December, making the issue less visible than it would otherwise have been during the weeks leading up to the 2006 Congressional elections.
The new case is also a Bush administration appeal, but one on which the administration had urged the justices to postpone action until after they ruled in the St. Louis case, Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380. Administration lawyers told the court that the new case, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, No. 05-1382, duplicated the other in significant respects, and that there was no reason to "delay the ultimate resolution of the extraordinarily important question of the act's constitutionality."
However, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which brought the successful challenge to the law in the federal appeals court in San Francisco, urged the justices to add the new case because the appeals court decision had swept more broadly and provided "the most complete available record" on the likely impact of the statute.
The law, which has never taken effect because of legal challenges, makes it a crime for doctors to perform abortions by a method that abortion opponents have labeled partial birth. In its opinion on Jan. 31 invalidating the statute, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the method was described so vaguely that the law could criminalize abortions commonly performed in the second trimester of pregnancy, well before a fetus is viable, thus violating the right to due process.
In the St. Louis case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit had not addressed this issue, instead limiting its decision to the question of the law's failure to include an exception to protect a pregnant woman's health. Abortion rights advocates have generally viewed the Ninth Circuit's opinion as the more complete and persuasive.
Eve C. Gartner, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood, said in an interview that she was pleased by the court's action. It shows, she said, that "they're open to hearing our arguments."