Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, November 2. I'm Nailibudu. Here's what you need to know today, the county at the heart of the Virginia Governor's race. Plus, what Mark Zuckerberg's virtual metaverse means for our real-life bodies.

But first, today's one big thing. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments around abortion.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in two cases challenging the Texas abortion law that allows private citizens to sue to enforce the state's six-week abortion ban.

One of the cases was brought on by Whole Women's Health and abortion provider in Texas, the other by the Department of Justice.

If you listen to these legal arguments yesterday, it can get pretty complex. So here with us to unpack what we need to know is Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. Hi, Jeffrey.

Hi, good to talk. Jeffrey, there's two cases here. What was most surprising about the oral arguments that you heard yesterday?

What was most surprising is that a majority of justice's liberal and conservative seemed sympathetic to the idea that the Texas law, which is set up to make it really hard to challenge the constitutionality of banning abortions before Roe v. Wade says they're protected, should be able to be challenged.

There's highly technical, but both justices Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked questions suggesting that they were sympathetic to the idea that a law set up to make it impossible for judges to review its constitutionality is problematic.

A lot of the discussion came down to the meaning of a 1908 decision. It's called X Part A Young, which says that usually when you're trying to challenge an unconstitutional law, you sue the state official who's supposed to enforce it.

But here, state officials don't enforce the law. Any private individual and you don't even have to live in Texas can sue someone who helps you get an abortion and win $10,000.

So what was so significant is Brett Kavanaugh said there's a loophole that's been exploited here or used here that makes it impossible in X Part A Young to find some state official that you can file suit against.

Maybe we should close that loophole because the whole point of X Part A Young was to ensure that if the constitution was being violated, then there should be someone responsible for enforcing it in the state who could be sued.

What does that mean for the case?

That suggests that a majority of justices do seem likely to allow the abortion providers to pursue their federal court challenge.

It doesn't tell us whether the law itself is constitutional. It would send the case back to the lower court.

It also wasn't clear whether the court would stop the law from going forward while the case proceeds.

But it would mean that the constitutionality of the law could in fact be challenged in federal court.

So Jeffrey, what are the big takeaways here because there's two different cases that we've been talking about.

And this is not the only challenge around Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court is going to hear this term.

The big takeaways after three hours of really technical and important oral argument is the justices were more sympathetic to the case brought by the Texas abortion providers than they were to the suit filed by the Biden administration because they didn't want to give the federal governments the power to sue states really broadly.

But a lot of the justices seem concerned, hey, if we allow this law to go into effect, then first amendment rights and second amendment rights could be threatened by creating these really technical laws that are being enforced by what they called private bounty hunters and not by state officials.

Jeffrey Rosen is CEO of the National Constitution Center and also hosts the podcast We The People. Thank you Jeffrey.

...