IANAL but it seems to me that they legislated “standing” through state statute. It would be for the Texas Supreme Court to determine whether or not the definition of standing can remain in place.
But wait, they’re not done. It gets better, folks:
The Republicans don’t give a drop of rat’s piss about the sanctity of life; this is about controlling women’s health, and eventually everybody else. They’re honestly not any better than the Taliban. Hell I can see why they wanted Biden to keep Americans in Afghanistan. They admire the Taliban that much.
So the legislature has decreed that there’s no such thing as “standing” any more… in general? Or just with regards to abortions?
IANAL either, but either interpretation sounds batshit insane.
The whole thing is an ass-biter, and a lot of conservatives know it.
Yes, they are batshit insane. No offense, but where the hell have you been? This is the Republican party. They are creating a cult. If you let them, they will take over the country. Do not make the mistake of treating Republicans like a normal political party. They are not. They don’t want to win free and fair elections; they want to rig the system and keep a permanent advantage.
I’ve been trying to explain since 2016 where we are headed. We are headed toward insanity. You have to throw out all of the “normal”, all of the things that you think you understand about democracy, about civics – that’s dead. You’re dealing with a party that wants to eliminate competitive democracy in this country, and you’d better damn well understand that right now.
Nah, the red will get redder; the blue will get bluer. That’s the point. This favors Republicans, provided that they can draw their district maps right.
It could also keep control of the house and senate in democrat hands for another two years.
IANAL either, but my understanding is that they the law effectively gives everyone standing WRT to helping people get abortions. What’s not 100% clear to me (and I’ve heard both interpretations) is if that only Texas residents have this new “standing,” or if anyone (even a non-resident of Texas) can sue someone in Texas over an abortion.
It’s not like the republicans haven’t pushed extreme abortion laws – they’ve been doing this a long time. Some of the most extreme laws were passed between 2016 and 2019. This won’t move the needle much.
What ultimately sunk Trump was the pandemic, and guess what: Delta variant is tanking Biden.
I heard one analysis today that said the same logic could be used in California, so that any resident could sue a gun manufacturer any time somebody gets shot.
Answered in post #2. A state can define standing however it wants for its own courts. To get into federal courts, you must meet Article III standing.
NY Times op-ed a few days ago posited that the GOP is so cynical, they want Delta to spread so they can continue to make the case that Biden has failed to contain covid, besides the fact that millions of unvaccinated Republicans are effectively drunk drivers spreading Covid long after most adults shoulda been vaccinated already.
Modern day Nathan Hales. “I regret I have only one life to pwn the libs.”
As I understand it (and IANAL)
This law does not target the woman getting an abortion, it targets those “aiding and abetting” the abortion. If you drive a woman to the airport to take a trip to Connecticut for an abortion you could be dragged into court under this law for giving her a ride, and action that did take place in Texas. If you given her money for travel then you could be dragged into court for that because the money transfer occurred in Texas. Rinse and repeat.
Worse yet, someone in Connecticut could, knowing a Texas woman came to that state for an abortion, invoke this law against the Uber driver taking her to the airport and the friend/family who gave her the money for the ticket and sue them in Texas even though the person bringing the suit is from Connecticut.
Or so I’ve been told - perhaps a lawyer could weigh in on this in a more definitive manner.
I’m not a lawyer, so I apologize in advance if this is a silly question, but is there any provision in this new law which protects individuals from being subjected to multiple frivolous actions?
For example, if I were a Texan pro-choice activist, I might be inclined to protest the new law by rounding up a hundred of my most ardently pro-choice friends and taking it in turns to sue Governor Abbott every month on suspicion of paying for his daughter’s abortion. Doesn’t matter if she’s had one or not. The aim would simply be to make life as difficult and humiliating as possible for the Abbott family.
Is there anything in the new law which would protect Abbott from such a campaign?
You know, for a bunch of people who rebelled against “Mad King George” and all the loyalists who stuck by him despite his alleged insanity, the Founding Fathers were somehow very trusting of future people in power. They certainly seem worried about the possibility of a Mad President who wants to be King, but they appear completely ignorant of the fact that such a “Mad President” wouldn’t be acting in a vacuum, but would have their own loyalists.
I don’t think so, unless the abortion provider in Connecticut is licensed to practice in Texas. As evidence, clinics in Texas are presently sending patients out of state for abortions.
~Max, not a lawyer
Kind of a Humpty Dumpty definition of “standing”, isn’t it?
It’s not a silly question. In Texas, there is a law against filing frivolous lawsuits (that I don’t see why it would not apply to this abortion law).
To answer your specific question, you can sue anyone - that’s just a reality - draft a complaint, file it and pay the fee - Abbott has been sued. The question is what happens after that. Here, Abbott would respond with a motion to dismiss your lawsuit and a motion for sanctions ($) because you filed a frivolous lawsuit. He’d win because your aim in filing the lawsuit was simply to make his life difficult and to humiliate his family.
However, if your aim was not to harass Abbott, and you had a genuine suspicion/belief his daughter might be considering getting an abortion/had an abortion and Abbott was going to pay for it/did pay for it, you’d likely get past Abbott’s motion to dismiss/sanctions and onto the merits of the lawsuit.
So, which of laws or rules are broken by the various ways of getting around the law, and any guesses which will be the most popular?
- Abortion by a non-doctor
- Doctor doing it off the books? Maybe a darknet “match doctor with patient “ site?
- Get secondary or off label uses added to an abortion drug, so possession isn’t proof of gettin an abortion?
- The old ways?
- Travel obviously.
- “You cut off our funding to buy heartbeat detecting equipment, so we didn’t know”
- Doc just stating they detected no heartbeat, cause who can check afterwards?
If I didn’t expect Uber & Lyft to officially un-sanction trips to anything abortionrelated (drivers breaking their own rules is pretty routine), so only the driver and not the company is liable, I could see them pushing back on transport suits.