I don’t have a good title for this post, but I do have a collection of stories.
Planned Parenthood files restraining order against Texas Right to Life.
Right there with them
Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and its affiliates filed a temporary restraining order with a Texas district court Thursday night against Texas Right to Life to stop the anti-abortion organization from suing abortion providers under a new law that all but bans abortions in the state.
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Planned Parenthood, which has stopped providing abortion services in San Antonio but continues elsewhere in the state, refers to SB 8 as the “sue thy neighbor law.”
“Anti-abortion activists are already staking out our health centers, surveilling our providers, and threatening our patients,” said Helene Krasnoff, vice president for public policy litigation and law for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a news release. “The physicians, nurses, and clinic staff at Planned Parenthood health centers in Texas — and at abortion providers statewide — deserve to come to work without fear of harassment or frivolous lawsuits.”
This unprecedented enforcement framework essentially circumvents traditional judicial review. Typically, individuals or groups would legally challenge the state as the enforcer — but this law removes the state from the equation. In order for the Supreme Court to review the law, someone will have to sue someone who performed or assisted an illegal abortion; only then it can be challenged.
If the district court grants the restraining order, it would only apply to Planned Parenthood, its affiliates, and an individual Planned Parenthood Houston physician, Dr. Bhavik Kumar, who joined the order. This means other providers would likely still be subject to the law.
Texas Right to Life, which helped write the bill, set up a “whistleblower” tip line so people can report violations to the anti-abortion organization. An email seeking the organization’s comment on the restraining order was not returned Friday morning.
The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) said on Twitter that it will defy the law.
“The ban on abortion in Texas is an abomination,” the nonprofit tweeted. “We want to send a very clear message: RAICES will not obey this archaic and sexist law. We’ve funded & supported access to abortions for immigrants in Texas for years and will continue to do so. Some laws are meant to be broken.”
You can see a copy of the lawsuit, which asks for a temporary restraining order as well as temporary and permanent injunctions against the defendants, “>here. The suit includes 100 “John Doe” defendants as “those individuals or entities who have expressed to other Defendants, whether by words or actions, their intention to enforce S.B. 8 against Plaintiffs”. I’m not exactly sure how that works, but I guess we’ll find out. It seems to me that in addition to the federal lawsuit, which is still ongoing despite the Supreme Court’s cowardly and corrupt ruling that allowed SB8 to take effect in the interim, every stakeholder who could reasonably foresee themselves as being on the wrong side of one of these nuisance vigilante actions should do the same thing and file their own pre-emptive lawsuit. We’ve already established that anyone can sue anyone over this, so who needs standing? KVUE has more.
On the subject of that federal litigation, it’s hard to say what comes next.
“This is all uncharted territory,” said Caroline Mala Corbin, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law. “So it’s really hard to say definitively what’s going to happen.”
What makes the law so unusual is its private enforcement, allowing nearly anyone to sue a doctor or other person who helps provide an abortion after six weeks, a point at which many women don’t yet realize they’re pregnant. Because the ban is not enforced by state officials, it’s difficult to know who abortion clinics can sue to challenge the law’s constitutionality.
The court’s conservative majority did not rule Wednesday on the law itself, and in fact acknowledged that abortion providers had raised “serious questions” about its constitutionality.
But the justices also expressed doubt about their ability to intervene in a privately enforced law such as the Texas law, Senate Bill 8, and experts said abortion proponents may have to think through other ways to get the issue before the court.
“The federal route is not dead, but the problem with it is it’s going to take some creativity on the part of federal courts to figure out why SB 8 and laws that may be like it are a real problem,” said Seth Chandler, a professor at the University of Houston School of Law.
“If SB 8 is OK, there’s nothing to stop Texas from passing a law that creates $10,000 private bounties for newspaper reporters who write things that are critical of the governor,” Chandler said. “Or for California to pass laws that may create a private bounty against people who own handguns in their home.”
Maya Manian, a visiting professor at the American University Washington College of Law, said the court could have at least temporarily intervened to allow for more time to review the claims.
“There is no question the Supreme Court could have found a way to overcome these procedural hurdles,” Manian said. “Yet they’re using this procedural cover to covertly overrule Roe v. Wade,” referring to the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.
There’s no question that SCOTUS’ refusal to issue a stay against SB8 was an appalling and wholly political abandonment of their duty. Maybe the outcry that is now occurring will be enough to actually spur some federal action, both in terms of passing a law to enshrine Roe as the standard, and also to put some restraints on the increasingly overreaching Supreme Court. Just its abuse of the shadow docket is sufficient cause to reel them in. I’ll believe it when I see it happen, unfortunately. Beyond that, SB8 is so vague as well as unprecedented that no one really knows what its scope is. I suspect that was a feature of this abomination.
Back to the Chron story:
Several legal experts said the fastest way to challenge the law may be to openly defy it, a move Planned Parenthood and other providers have so far been reluctant to do.
“There will be someone mad enough to violate the law and happily serve as a test subject,” Mala Corbin said. “Because the women of Texas are not going to take this without a fight. This is their right to control their body at stake.”
Miriam Camero, vice president of social programs at RAICES, a group that gives legal aid to immigrants, said it was prepared to help women access abortion regardless of the law. Camero noted that the ban especially harms immigrants who already have a difficult time traveling to abortion clinics or out of state given their legal status.
“We will continue to assist clients, whether it be in Texas or Louisiana or Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico,” Camero said.
It appears RAICES has already taken that step. We’ll see if they get hit with one of those lawsuits, in which case perhaps there will be a route to swifter action.
Doctors are also very unhappy with this new law.
The Texas Medical Association slammed the state Legislature on Friday, calling its passage of two anti-abortion bills “unconstitutional” and an interference with the fundamental patient-physician relationship.
“Enough,” the organization wrote in a statement. “The Texas Medical Association supports our physicians specializing in women’s health and opposes legislation in Senate Bill 8 of Texas’ 87th legislative session and Senate Bill 4 of this special session. SB 4 contains language that criminalizes the practice of medicine. Both bills interfere with the patient-physician relationship.”
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On Wednesday, SB 8, which bans abortion after six weeks, including in instances of rape and incest, went into effect. The new law is a near-total ban on abortion and one of the strictest such measures in the country.
Hours before that, the Texas House passed Senate Bill 4, which would reduce access to abortion-inducing pills, the most common method for patients terminating a pregnancy. As sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, the bill would prevent physicians or providers from prescribing these medications to patients more than seven weeks pregnant.
Current Texas laws allow, and FDA guidelines suggest, practitioners to give these pills to patients who are up to 10 weeks pregnant.
“SB 8 and SB 4 go too far. Clearly these provisions are unconstitutional, in our opinion. TMA stands for the health care of all Texans and our profession. Enough is enough,” the statement continued.
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“SB 8 allows for a bounty that encourages practically any citizen to file a cause of action against physicians, other health care professionals, and anyone who ‘aids or abets,’ based on a suspicion. If permitted to proceed, this law will be precedent-setting and could normalize vigilante interference in the patient-physician relationship in other complex, controversial medical or ethical situations.”
Meanwhile, the bill that was passed in the Texas House this week, SB 4, which limits access to abortion-inducing pills, would make it a criminal act for physicians to give these medications to patients more than seven weeks into a pregnancy.
“The physicians of Texas never thought the day would come when the performance of our oath would create a private cause of action for persons not connected to or harmed by the action. Yet, that day has sadly arrived in the state we love,” the TMA wrote.
Very heartfelt, and it’s easy to understand their outrage, but last I checked the TMA has been pretty supportive of Republican politicians, mostly because of tort “reform”. You want to convince me that you’re actually mad and not just having a minor snit, there’s an easy way to put your literal money where your figurative mouths are.
Finally, I mentioned the Texas Right to Life snitch site. As you may have heard, it has attracted some attention from folks who intend to disrupt it.
The Texas Right to Life organization created a website for those reports. But instead of citizens reporting on, say, the Uber driver who brought a woman to a clinic, critics of the law are spamming it with a barrage of fake information. Gov. Greg Abbott and Marvel’s Avengers are among those being reported receiving abortions, according to the New York Times.
Part of the flood of false info sent to the website appears to be aided by an activist and developer who posts under the social media alias Sean Black. In a viral TikTok first reported by Motherboard at Vice, Black explained that he wrote a script that anyone can access, which automates the process of letting them file fake reports. Each time they access Black’s script, new information is generated, theoretically making it harder for the Right to Life group to parse and ban people who are submitting fake reports.
As of September 2, not even 24 hours after the Supreme Court refused to halt the implementation of the law, Black told Vice the script had been clicked over 4,000 times.
Go get ’em, Sean Black.
UPDATE: One more story to add: Uber And Lyft Have Pledged To Cover Their Drivers’ Legal Fees If They Get Sued Under The Texas Abortion Law. Kudos to them for that.
UPDATE: TRO granted to Planned Parenthood. A hearing for an injunction will be September 13. No word yet about an appeal of the TRO.
