I would no longer trust the current Supreme Court to be above doing anything so stupid. If they do, it won’t matter anyway.
When State A tries to tell State B what is legal or not in State B, the result will be that State B simply tells State A to bug off. How will any state enforce its will on any other state?
And what difference would it then make, no matter what the Supreme Court, or any court, says. If the Supreme Court begins to rule that states can dictate law to other states, then states will simply overtly tell the Supreme Court to go jump in a lake. The SC will lose its authority completely, and the jobs of the nine justices will become irrelevant sinecures.
If a state can criminalize activity in another state, then what are the limits.
This is also an interesting aspect. Obviously, you don’t have to be a resident of South Carolina to commit murder inside SC. You don’t even have to be a US citizen. So if SC can forbid residents from having an abortion in NY, why can’t they forbid anyone who comes within their clutches from having violated that law by having an out-of-state abortion, and arrest them the moment they can?
Plus, if you’re talking about abortion, why not gun control? Can NY or CA then arrest anyone who sells a gun in SC to a NY resident? To a SC resident who then brought that gun to NY? To a SC resident who never came to NY?
There was a suggestion that Texas’ “let anyone sue” approach to abortion would be reciprocated by a state like California passing the same sort of law allowing anyone to sue someone anywhere, any time who sold an AR15.
They make to a crime to do something - but people get arrested and prosecuted when the state believes they have done that thing.
If territorial jurisdiction doesn’t matter, and a doctor in NY violates Texas law by performing an abortion in NY , why couldn’t Texas prohibit anyone from having an abortion anywhere and arrest a NJ resident who had an abortion in NY that was legal under NY law when that person visits Texas a month later?
How is this scenario different from say someone living in a state where gambling is illegal goes to Las Vegas.
If this was actionable, shouldn’t millions of people have been arrested for making that trip?
I openly admit that in 1994, I, a citizen of New York State, did willfully travel to Nevada to “lose” money in casinos, a thing I could not do at home.
Where’s the outrage?
I’m so sick of this. Let those states loose to make a new confederacy, provided all nukes within their borders are removed, and a grace period is declared to allow anyone who wants to escape their dystopia to come live in the real America. Also, they get a warning that any new nuclear capability development will be considered an act of war. And if so, they will be reconquered and treated as the colonies they should have been after the (first) Civil War.
The various Fugitive Slave Acts are examples of exactly how states enforce their will on other states. They often failed in court, because the cases are typically held in jurisdictions that disagree with the underlying law. But they didn’t always fail in court.
If a law entitles the state or a private citizen to sue someone for something like, say, $10,000 for aiding an abortion - if the plaintiff gets a judgement in, let’s say, Texas for $10,000 and goes to Well Fargo knowing the defendant has an account in that bank in NYC - what can Wells Fargo do when served, to avoid paying, other than close down all Texas branches and remove itself from business in Texas?
Well if they come to Connecticut for the abortion, they can I believe counter-sue in CT at least to recover costs. So who knows whats’ going to happen.
And then suppose NY passes a law allowing any resident who is dinged that way to sue Wells-Fargo for triple damages. You could see the end of interstate banking.
I guess it boils down to - what happens if a countrywide corporation is served conflicting court orders by two different states? Can a Company create subsidiaries to escape this, or is serving a subsidiary the same as serving the head office?
I’m also thinking of the scenario where say, Starbucks Texas says “we know nothing about reimbursements for travel to get an abortion for our employees, we can’t supply that data, that’s all handled by the Seattle head office…”
I suppose Starbucks International could also create a third-party company or hire a trustee to handle such things, and all they do is write a cheque and hand it to Pink Hats Inc. every month who then handles employee requests for money.
“Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.”