AFAIK it was Alito’s decision alone not to grant the emergency petition. He (or rather, his clerk) handles petitions from Texas.
~Max
5-4 the law goes into effect…at least for now.
Summary:
5 (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Barrett, Kavanaugh): Due to the unique posture of the cases and the legal means that seem pretty tight under current law, the petitioners have not carried their burden. We are not saying the law is constitutional or not, but are not issuing an injunction until we hear more or there is a defendant that can actually be sued.
1: Roberts (joined by Breyer and Kagan): The posture is unique, but so is Texas’ clever way of trying to deny the government power. All the more reason to keep things as they are until we figure it out.
3: Three different opinions by Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor—all joining each opinion—saying that Texas has clearly tried to do something unconstitutional and the Court should stop it.
It seems to me that Shelley v. Kramer is directly on point: Shelley v. Kraemer - Wikipedia
Once the first suit happens, it should be enjoined under this doctrine that although private parties are not subject to 14th Amendment actions, a state which permits those actions to have the force of law cannot escape the consequences of that.
Now, this thought has its own problems which haven’t come to pass, but one could easily see how they could. If I throw someone out of my home for saying something I disagree with and call the police to have them ejected, how is the state not abridging free speech rights?
But it isn’t like this is the first time its happened, but maybe the Court is right to have a proper defendant.
Okay, thanks, this makes the general reaction I mentioned at least make sense, regardless of what you think of the merits of the “freak out.”
As to the main topic, previous posts have gotten me leaning towards this particular implementation going nowhere fast. But of course, a lot will be prevented from happening in the meantime, and it’s obviously not going to be the last attempt.
The reason why you’re making your guest leave is immaterial. It’s your private property, not a business open to the general public, and you get to choose who you’re allowing to use it and who you’re not, period. So if you need to call the cops to get your guest to leave, the state isn’t doing anything vis-a-vis free speech rights, it’s just protecting your property rights.
Anyhow, it sounds like this Texas law would be just about the worst law ever, even if it had nothing to do with abortion, given that it basically allows every citizen to use the courts for vigilante actions against their neighbors near and far, and rewards them for doing so.
East Germany falls through a time warp from 40 years ago, and comes to Texas.
This law is so bizarre. Can someone like, sue me and say I had an abortion, or aided one, even if I didn’t and there is no evidence? If they do, is the burden for court costs on me?
Someone should start suing Gregg Abbott.
I think you’re starting to get it now.
The context here is that SCOTUS conservatives are partisan hacks who don’t expect to be in the minority for a while, if ever (deep thanks to Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer for helping with that project).
They get to shape precedent and jurisprudence for a generation. That new jurisprudence will be a dual standard where the cheese-grater of textualism will grind away unenumerated rights valued by liberals, while conservative ones are enshrined by a tortured reading of that same rubric. If you lose a minute of sleep over what this will mean for gun rights, you don’t understand what’s going on.
This situation is going to be really hard to understand if you’re interpreting it through a lens where Republicans are acting with any regard for the rule of law, judicial precedent, and norms of government. But it’s really easy to understand once you accept that this is the culmination of a 20-year Republican product to install a baldly partisan puppet court to serve their interests.
I almost said “underhanded” up there but they’ve never really hidden what they’re doing. For a while we clung to the belief that the conservative “adults in the room” would never be so callow and audacious. Then when that illusion fell away, we told ourself our institutions would certainly halt any such naked power grab. Now that they’ve replaced those institutions brick by brick, we’re telling ourselves that this can’t possibly be what it looks like.
It’s exactly what it looks like.
As I read it, the woman who had an abortion wouldn’t be a defendant in the lawsuit. Just anyone who assisted with the abortion. The main target is abortion providers who couldn’t absorb a >$10K expense per lawsuit. It could (and I expect would) be used to target the woman’s friends and associates.
Naturally the sperm donor has no liability here except to the extent that he might aid an abortion.
Yes, the law is drafted in such a way that the losing party cannot recover court costs. There is every incentive to file these suits, and every incentive to avoid getting named in one. Hence the reason providers have closed up shop.
It would be interesting to see what happened if people just willy-nilly started suing other people for shits and giggles.
I suspect this law begins to fall apart when it starts encountering real-life tests and challenges, but:
- Given the composition of the appeals court and SCOTUS, it might not.
- This law was not drafted with the expectation that these lawsuits would actually happen. It only has 2 real purposes: to scare abortion providers out of TX, and for TX Republicans to show their base that they still have some fight and power in them.
Even if the law falls apart over the next 5-10 years, it’s still achieved its purpose.
If this is the case, why did the Texas law makers limit the application of this new law only to cases of “murder” by abortion? Why wouldn’t they have made it apply to the murder - or alleged murder - of anyone, born or unborn? For example, if I’m in Texas and my neighbor’s 6 month old dies, or even if I’m in another state and I read a news story about a baby - or anyone for that matter- dying in Texas from any presumed cause, why, by the principles and logic embodied in this law, should I not be able to think “I think that person may have been murdered”, and then sue anyone who can be in anyway construed as having “abetted” that murder?
If it were as simple as the law’s advocates believing that “abortion = murder”, then by mathematical logic “murder = abortion” and laws that applies to one should apply to the other.
For Republicans, this was why the Barrett nomination was more than worth the rank hypocrisy of pushing her through despite their stance on Garland just four years earlier. As long as Roberts was the swing vote, he could reign in the court conservatives to adopt a more methodical and “judicious” approach to advancing conservative priorities. He was particularly adept at this on cases involving the ACA, chipping away at it without looking blatantly partisan or risking political blowback by throwing the health care markets into turmoil.
With a 6-3 majority, the conservatives don’t need to worry about what he thinks. As Kavanaugh and Barrett start to feel their own more, I fully expect more of these decisions.
It isn’t just that the abortion provider is liable to be sued – each individual employee of the provider is also liable to be sued for $10,000 per abortion. Good luck finding a receptionist when he or she could be facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil liabilities.
Pro-lifers (as if) set up a tip line for Texans to report abortions that violate the new law. This is just disgusting.
It’s being spammed. But it’s still just too awful.
And it’s a minimum of $10,000, so it will be impossible to fundraise in advance. The law explicitly allows forum-shopping by allowing any county’s court to hear a case arising anywhere in the state, with defendants being prohibited from seeking the removal of a case to another county, so they’ll soon figure out which judges are willing to go higher than $10,000 and file all of their cases in those courts only.
Parts of it remind me of nothing less than the Fugitive Slave Act.
Is there any downside to say, filing suits accusing Ken Paxton in aiding abortions? Maybe a lot of them?
None.
An attorney could still be sanctioned for filing frivolous or baseless lawsuits. You’d need some sort of argument for how Paxton is violating the law.
You don’t even have to file suits, you can just flood all the hotlines and tip pages.
Do you have to be a lawyer to file in civil court? You can’t lose a law license you don’t have.
None of this matters. Every abortion provider in Texas has packed up shop. There are no abortions to be aided or abetted. I’ll be surprised if this law actually results in any lawsuits. There’s really no need, the damage is done.