With all the red states talking about suing medical practitioners and patients who go to another state to get an abortion, could a blue state pass a law allowing its citizens to sue (either the state or members of the legislature) who, because of the abortion ban caused illness or death among people denied abortions?
Example. A brother and sister live in California and Louisiana respectively. The sister in Louisiana has an ectopic pregnancy and can’t get an abortion, and dies. Can California pass a law giving the brother the ability to sue the government of Louisiana, or sue the legislators who passed an abortion ban, for killing his sister by denying her medical care?
I would say that based on state sovereignty that only Louisiana can give people standing to sue Louisiana unless it is a violation at the Federal level in which case California has no say whatsoever because it is a Fed issue…
Perhaps a case can be brought on wrongful death / denial of needed medical attention. Though the state does enjoy a lot of sovereign immunity. It may also apply against doctors, facilities and hospitals who refuse to treat her condition.
I would say that the suit would be against the medical practitioners who did not provide adequate medical treatment. “To save the life of the mother” is part of the exceptions built into every anti-abortion bill I’ve seen, so removing an ectopic pregnancy would be within the law, and not doing so would be neglecting patient care.
I think there are later rulings based on the 14th Amendment that if a Federal law is violated they can but that is more within our SD lawdogs knowledge base.
Unless I’m missing something no law was broken. In the scenario given the law in Louisiana was followed and the person in California wants to sue because of the outcome of following the state law.
Under the doctrine of “state sovereign immunity,” a state cannot be sued in federal and state court without its consent. Many academics and judges struggle to make sense of modern U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence on sovereign immunity.1 While the Eleventh Amendment limits immunity to two specific situations in federal court,2 the Supreme Court held that immunity derives not from the Amendment, but “from the structure of the original Constitution itself.”3 Thus, the Court not only has expanded federal court immunity from suit well beyond the Eleventh Amendment’s explicit directives, but also has enshrined state sovereign immunity in state courts . As a result, in its own court, a state can invoke immunity even when sued under an otherwise valid federal law4 and has full authority to define the scope of their immunity from suits based on its own law. This has prompted the creation of a variety of sovereign immunity regimes among the states.
That’s right. I forgot there was a SCOTUS case (I forget which) basically said that states were immune from (at least certain) Federal Laws. Specifically it was about Florida and indirectly it gave public school teachers (as actors for the state) permission to violate copyright law with material in the teaching of their classroom. OK I know that was all over the place and I wish I remembered the case, but looking for it I discovered Allen v Cooper (2020) where SCOTUS said
Held: Congress lacked authority to abrogate the States’ immunity from copyright infringement suits in the CRCA. Pp. 4–17.
So my questions are: are there any Federal Laws that a state is not immune from? Is a state immune from being sued from any Constitutional violation?
That is an unlikely scenario. Even the most dedicated pro-lifer will allow abortion to save the mother’s life. Most, probably all, anti abortion legislation will have an exception in the case of ectopic pregnancy.
A sweeping new bill under consideration in Louisiana would allow prosecutors to charge anyone who undergoes or provides an abortion with murder, which opponents worry could result in penalizing women who experience miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. The legislation changes the legal definition of a “person” from a fertilized egg that has been implanted in the womb to simply a fertilized egg.
That change could be disastrous. And since most republicans are not wise in the ways of science - people will suffer.