There's a deep legal tradition in the US that courts do not fool with "legislative findings."
The theory of this is that legislatures can investigate and investigation is within their writ. They have subpoena power. They can not only summon experts but employ them and cross examine them and, theoretically, find where the cutting edge of scientific truth lies. They are also better fixed to deal with the reality that scientific frontiers move, and that acts have unintended consequences.
Courts may only rule on controversies brought to them. If they make a mistake, it can survive way past its rational shelf-life.
The problem with this perfectly rational legal tradition is "the people" taking their sovereignty to mean that there's no difference between facts and opinions, and you can always hire a scientist to say this or that so finding truth is hopeless. Therefore, the only contest is among opinions and elevating some above others is elitism.
The latest manifestation is "fetal pain at 20 weeks." This is not a matter of opinion, nor is it sufficient to support the legislation being passed even if you adopt the minority position.
After all, if the government can violate your bodily integrity to serve another person's life by, say, harvesting your kidney (of which you have two), the government won't do that without anesthesia, right? If you really think a 20 week fetus feels pain, there are ways to deal with that short of violating the bodily integrity of another person. But how you can think that with the current state of the evidence...oh, don't get me started.
After all, our Texas governor thinks evolution is "just another theory out there." The other name for it is "natural selection." If they breed livestock where Mr. Perry was raised, and I'm told they do, he should be familiar with "un-natural selection." Is God at least as smart as a farmer? Don't answer that.
In West Texas, the Legislature has taken the position that it is not economically feasible to require natural gas drillers to recycle their fracking water. While it is economically feasible to require whole towns to recycle their urine to drink.
In my social science book, economics, the policy issue is whether you allow negative externalities to be put off on the commons or to be absorbed by those who profit from the externalities. SO WHO SHOULD RECYCLE?
There's the rub, or another rub. In Brown v. Board of Education, the SCOTUS erased the line between natural science and social science.
But, still, we defer to legislative findings.
What good are the findings of scientific truth by persons who do not believe in science or, to put a finer point on it, think science is a matter for belief?