Whole Woman’s Health Alliance

There’s a lot to unpack here.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the legal challenge brought forward by abortion providers against Texas’ abortion restriction law may continue, bringing new life into what has become the most significant effort to overturn the statute so far.

The court allowed the suit to continue on an 8-1 decision but did not stop the law’s enforcement. Instead, the suit will continue in a lower federal court where abortion providers will resume seeking to block the law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 8.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed with allowing the suit to continue but condemned the high court’s decision to leave the law in effect, saying it has had “catastrophic consequences for women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion in Texas.”

“The Court should have put an end to this madness months ago, before S. B. 8 first went into effect,” she wrote. “It failed to do so then, and it fails again today.”

In a separate decision, the court dismissed a separate challenge from the Biden administration.

The justices also allowed the abortion providers to sue some state licensing officials, but not state court clerks, citing difficulties surrounding sovereign immunity. This could make it difficult for providers to get the law’s enforcement blocked overall in court.

“By blessing significant portions of the law’s effort to evade review, the Court comes far short of meeting the moment,” Sotomayor said. “By foreclosing suit against state court officials and the state attorney general, the Court clears the way for States to reprise and perfect Texas’ scheme in the future to target the exercise of any right recognized by this Court with which they disagree. This is no hypothetical. New permutations of S. B. 8 are coming.”

[…]

The providers’ suit returns to U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who previously blocked enforcement of the law for two days. It was resumed by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is known as perhaps the nation’s most conservative appellate court.

The suit could now follow a similar trajectory as before: If Pitman blocks the law again, abortion opponents will likely appeal to the 5th Circuit as well — and then the case could land before the Supreme Court once more.

[…]

Katherine Franke, a professor of law at Columbia University and director of the university’s Center of Gender and Sexuality Law, said she was pleased that the Supreme Court allowed the provider’s lawsuit to continue — but the court continues to make concessions over a person’s right to an abortion.

“What the [Supreme Court] has done is reiterate what their earlier ruling was, which is that a majority does not see a constitutional emergency in this case, even though SB 8 clearly and intentionally violates established Supreme Court law,” she said.

Franke said allowing the law to stay in effect while court proceedings continue proves that abortion rights are in jeopardy more than something like religious freedom. Although Friday’s decision allows the fight against Texas’ law to continue, she said more should have been done to protect abortion rights.

“The decision could have been much worse than it was … but this decision takes place within a larger legal landscape where the underlying right that’s at stake — that the court has not even addressed yet — could very well be eliminated and overruled,” she said. “It’s not a complete loss. I wouldn’t say it’s a partial victory, but it’s not a complete loss.”

See here for the previous entry, here for this ruling, and here for the dismissal of the Justice Department lawsuit. I’d like to see some more commentary on that ruling, because I don’t like it at all. The most thorough analysis I’ve seen of the main ruling so far comes from Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern.

The upshot of Friday’s decisions is this: Abortion providers can now ask U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman to block S.B. 8. Pitman will swiftly grant their request by issuing an injunction against “executive licensing officials” tasked with enforcing the law, a decision that should stand in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Texas’ clinics will presumably begin providing abortions again, though they are not fully protected from civil suits.

In the meantime, all parties will await the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, due by June, which may overturn Roe v. Wade and permit Texas to implement a more straightforward abortion ban. And other states may still pass S.B. 8–style laws that empower vigilantes to sue abortion providers, as long as they tweak the language to comply with Friday’s decision.

[…]

Now the court has issued the narrowest possible decision to let the providers’ suit proceed. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court rejected their primary theory: that providers could sue state court judges and clerks to prevent the docketing of S.B. 8 cases. Gorsuch held that these agents of the state enjoy “sovereign immunity,” the doctrine that states are generally immune from private lawsuits. There is an exception from this rule called Ex parte Young that permits individuals to sue state officials, but Gorsuch held that it does not apply to state court judges and clerks. “Usually, those individuals do not enforce state laws as executive officials might,” he wrote; “instead, they work to resolve disputes between parties.”

Gorsuch identified other roadblocks, asserting that there is “no case or controversy” between providers and state courts and no remedy that “permits clerks to pass on the substance of the filings they docket—let alone refuse a party’s complaint based on an assessment of its merits.” He also rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to sue Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, writing that Paxton has no authority to enforce S.B. 8. And even if Paxton did have such power, Gorsuch concluded, federal courts cannot “parlay” an injunction against an attorney general “into an injunction against any and all unnamed private persons who might seek to bring their own S.B. 8 suits.”

This part of Gorsuch’s ruling is a victory for providers—albeit an extremely limited one, for two reasons. First, it’s not clear that an injunction against licensing officials would stop bounty hunters from filing lawsuits under S.B. 8; it would only restrict the state’s ability to punish those clinics found liable under the law. Similarly, an injunction against licensing officials may not stop citizens from suing “abettors” who facilitate an abortion. Second, Texas and other states can easily work around Friday’s decision. Wary of that outcome, Chief Justice John Roberts—along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented from Gorsuch’s refusal to let providers sue state court clerks and the Texas attorney general. Roberts and Sotomayor wrote separate dissents, both focusing on Texas’ flagrant attempt to “nullify” rights protected by the federal Constitution.

Gorsuch did, however, identify one slim route around S.B. 8’s blockades: He allowed providers to sue the “executive licensing officials” who “may or must take enforcement actions against the petitioners if they violate” the law. These officials implement state law in a traditional manner, Gorsuch explained, and thus cannot claim sovereign immunity. They fall squarely into the Ex parte Young exception. And so there are no constitutional barriers stopping clinics from naming these parties as defendants in their federal lawsuit to freeze S.B. 8. Every justice except Clarence Thomas joined this part of Gorsuch’s decision; Thomas, alone, would have foreclosed all avenues of relief. So there are five votes to shield state court judges and clerks from federal suit, five votes to shield the attorney general from suit, and eight votes to let the suit against “executive licensing officials” proceed.

“Texas has employed an array of stratagems designed to shield its unconstitutional law from judicial review,” the chief justice wrote. “The clear purpose and actual effect of S.B. 8 has been to nullify this Court’s rulings.” And if legislatures can “annul the judgments of the courts of the United States,” then “the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” He asserted that state court clerks and Paxton were “proper defendants” because both play a role in imposing “burdens on those sued under S.B. 8.” An injunction against such defendants, Roberts acknowledged, may be “novel.” But “any novelty in this remedy is a direct result of the novelty of Texas’s scheme.”

Sotomayor’s dissent was substantially fierier. She criticized the majority for failing to “put an end to this madness months ago, before S.B. 8 first went into effect.” By allowing for such limited relief, Sotomayor wrote, the majority “effectively invites other States to refine S. B. 8’s model for nullifying federal rights,” betraying “not only the citizens of Texas, but also our constitutional system of government.”

[…]

There is a vast chasm between the two blocs in this case. The five most conservative justices appear to view S.B. 8 as a one-off, a desperate attempt to evade a decision (Roe v. Wade) that they themselves probably view as illegitimate. The four other justices see S.B. 8 as a direct threat to the Supreme Court’s authority to “say what the law is” by shielding constitutional liberties from state infringement. It seems the majority is troubled just enough to carve a path around some of S.B. 8’s blockades—but its solution is a ticket good for one ride only. Texas can pass nearly identical legislation that eliminates the powers of “executive licensing officials” and, apparently, lock providers out of federal court once again. Copycat bills have already cropped up in four other states, and Gorsuch has given legislators a road map to ensure that they can fully insulate their legislation from federal court review. He and his hard-right colleagues appear to believe that blue states won’t have the spine to deploy these tricks against rights favored by conservatives, like the right to bear arms.

Not much I can add to that, though you should read Dahlia Lithwick’s companion piece about the pile of failure that is John Roberts as well. The state lawsuit has drawn some boundaries, and if we get another injunction from Judge Pitman that survives the chainsaw massacre of the Fifth Circuit, we’ll be in a somewhat better place than we are right now. But the damage has been done to the clinics, and even without the looming threat of the Dobbs ruling, they may never recover. Mother Jones, The 19th, The Nation, and the Observer have more.

The good guys appear to have the upper hand in this case. It seems unlikely that will last for very long, however.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday grilled attorneys for abortion providers, the federal government and Texas over the state’s near-total abortion ban — and possibly hinted at support for allowing at least one legal challenge to the law to stand.

The majority of justices pushed back on the enforcement mechanism that has allowed the law to skirt judicial review so far but seemed skeptical of the federal government’s claims that it had a right to sue the state over the law.

The Supreme Court heard hearings over Texas’ abortion law, also known as Senate Bill 8, as part of two lawsuits — one lodged by abortion providers and the other by the U.S. Department of Justice. Both focused on procedural technicalities surrounding the law and the suits challenging it, not on abortion rights nor the constitutionality of the law itself.

Those questions centered on whether Texas’ enforcement strategy for the law is allowable — which empowers private citizens to sue those who perform or help someone get an abortion disallowed by the law — and whether the United States has the right to sue Texas over the statute.

Notably, conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh seemed to push back on Texas’ unique enforcement mechanism. Their line of questioning and comments suggested they might side with abortion providers in condemning the “loophole” that the law exploits to thwart judicial review. Kavanaugh and Barrett, along with three other conservative justices, voted against temporarily blocking the law on Sept. 1, when the law took effect.

Texas’ law, which blocks abortions at about six weeks into a pregnancy, skirts constitutional precedent by forbidding state officials from enforcing it and instead relying on private citizens to sue those in violation. Typically, in suits aiming to overturn laws considered unconstitutional, courts don’t block the laws themselves — they block their enforcement. This is the reason opponents have struggled to name the right defendants to block the law.

Much of the discussion Monday centered around how that enforcement mechanism could be replicated to cast a chilling effect other rights protected by the Constitution: not just abortion rights, but also gun ownership, freedom of the press and same-sex marriage.

See here for the details about what was to be argued in the case. The 19th goes into more depth about how Monday’s hearing went.

The significance of SB 8’s unusual structure and what that might mean for constitutional rights more broadly was a key focus. It is a point newly confirmed Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar honed in on during the second argument of the day.

“If the state can just take this simple mechanism of taking its enforcement authority and giving it to the general public, backed up with a bounty of $10,000 or $1 million, if they can do that, then no constitutional right is safe,” Prelogar argued. “No constitutional decision from this court is safe. That would be an intolerable state of affairs and it cannot be the law. Our constitutional guarantees cannot be that fragile, and the supremacy of federal law cannot be that easily subject to manipulation.”

Three of the court’s conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett — indicated openness to the arguments made by Texas’ abortion providers, noting in particular that the law turns state officials into enforcement agents. Both Barrett and Kavanaugh previously voted the opposite way, joining the court’s conservative wing in a September 2 decision allowing SB 8 to take effect.

Barrett asked leading questions about the clinics’ inability to obtain constitutional relief in state court under SB 8, which reveals she might vote in the providers’ favor, said Joanna Grossman, a professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.

Kavanaugh had already been deemed a likely swing vote. Kavanaugh showed particular skepticism of Texas’ argument and questioned whether the law could be used as a blueprint for other issues beyond abortion, such as restricting gun rights.

Those questions spoke to a deeper issue: Allowing the Texas law to stay in effect could weaken not only the federal government, but the Supreme Court’s overarching authority, by giving states a blueprint for writing laws that violate court precedent but circumvent judicial review.

That appears to be a powerful motivator, suggested Leah Litman, a constitutional law expert at the University of Michigan.

“The court is likely to protect its institutional authority, and that desire will probably unify and unite Democratic appointees and Republican appointees,” she said.

Focusing on the Whole Woman’s Health lawsuit could also allow the court to avoid some of the thornier constitutional questions raised in the U.S. government’s case, she added.

“The U.S. v Texas lawsuit might be — by asking what is the injury to the U.S. — that may be seen as teeing up bigger questions they don’t want to address,” [Melissa Murray, a reproductive law expert at New York University] said. “There may be more appetite for the provider suit.”

As both The 19th and Slate point out, whatever SCOTUS does here, they can clear a path for Texas to more cleanly ban abortion in the coming months.

In exactly one month, the justices will hear a more important case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that gives them an opportunity to overrule Roe v. Wade. And if Roe goes, Texas will simply ban abortion outright, obviating the need for the convulated workaround at the center of today’s oral arguments. For the three justices who are torn over S.B. 8, the solution may be simple: Affirm the federal judiciary’s supremacy over states that undermine their authority, then hand those states the power to ban abortion whenever, wherever, and however they please.

[…]

Previously, the big stumbling block for the conservative justices was the question of who to sue; in their shadow docket decision, the justices sounded uncertain about whether abortion providers can sue state judges and clerks to halt S.B. 8 in its tracks. Under a doctrine known as Ex parte Young, plaintiffs can sue government officials tasked with enforcing a law, though it’s unclear whether judges qualify. On Monday, Kavanaugh seemed to propose a compromise: close the “loophole” that Texas has “exploited” by allowing providers to sue clerks but not judges. The case would then go back down to the district court, who could bar Texas clerks from docketing S.B. 8 cases, thereby defanging the law. As a result, the Justice Department’s lawsuit would become irrelevant, because abortion providers could protect their own interests in federal court.

The best part of this compromise, to the conservatives, is that it could become irrelevant to abortion within months. On Dec. 1, the court will hear arguments in Dobbs, which asks them to overrule Roe v. Wade. If the majority accepts this invitation, Texas won’t need to worry about S.B. 8 anymore; it has already passed a “trigger law” that will automatically ban abortion if Roe falls. At the same time, blue states will not be able to deploy S.B. 8–style schemes against disfavored rights like the Second Amendment. We may remember S.B. 8 not as the start of a new era in state supremacy over constitutional rights, but as a last gasp of defiance before the Supreme Court plunged us into a post-Roe world.

So yeah, keep the bigger picture in mind. Reform Austin, Daily Kos, TPM, and the Chron have more.

I have no idea what to expect.

The U.S. Supreme Court will take up on Monday the highest-profile legal challenges to Texas’ new abortion law. The Supreme Court previously declined to act on the near-total abortion ban, making next week’s proceedings the first time the high court is stepping in on lawsuits seeking to stop it.

The court will consider two suits against the law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 8, which blocks abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. One is waged by the federal government, the other by a group of abortion providers and advocates.

The Supreme Court’s review will focus on how SB 8 is enforced, not abortion rights themselves. It’s hard to predict what the court could decide, but its ruling will likely determine the future of abortion care in Texas and shape the legal battles to come.

See here for the more in depth look at the legal questions; the Trib story is a recap of where are are now. Like I said, I have no idea what to expect. There are too many members of this court that cannot be trusted. What they do with this case will tell us how deep that goes.

The stakes are clear. Now we get to see if SCOTUS has any respect for the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether to take up abortion providers’ challenge to Texas’ near-total abortion ban sooner than the high court usually would hear arguments.

While the clinics’ lawsuit has not been heard by a federal appellate court, the Supreme Court agreed Monday afternoon to expedite the request from several clinics and providers that the high court instead consider the case. Texas must respond by noon Thursday.

The move came just hours after the Biden administration — in a separate challenge to Texas’ Senate Bill 8 — asked the high court to halt the near-total abortion ban while the Justice Department’s legal challenge to the new restrictions goes through the courts.

In its request filed Monday, the Justice Department argued that allowing the law to stand would “perpetuate the ongoing irreparable injury to the thousands of Texas women who are being denied their constitutional rights,” it added. The Supreme Court previously declined to block the law from taking effect in a separate lawsuit, though it did not weigh in on Senate Bill 8’s constitutionality.

The U.S. Justice Department’s request comes after a series of federal court decisions flip-flopped on whether the law should remain in effect as its constitutionality is being challenged.

[…]

Texas, the Justice Department argued in its filing, crafted an “unprecedented” structure to thwart the courts. Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many people know they are pregnant, has made abortion “effectively unavailable” after that time period, according to the Justice Department.

“Texas has, in short, successfully nullified this Court’s decisions within its borders,” the Justice Department wrote.

You can see the Justice Department filing here. The Justice Department had announced their intention to appeal late last week, so this was the actual filing and the request for relief from the ridiculous and lawless Fifth Circuit. The original lawsuit filed by the providers was in July, and we know what happened after that. Not really much to add here – even SCOTUS seemed to understand that SB8 had all kinds of questions surrounding it back when they first declined to step in. Now that we have seen the harm, not to mention the damage SCOTUS has done to its own standing, you’d think they would understand the need to do the normal thing and put that highly questionable law on the shelf while the courts do their thing. They have one chance to be seen as legitimate. I hope they take it. The Chron has more.

As expected.

The Biden administration will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stop enforcement of Texas’ near-total abortion ban, according to a Friday statement from a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson.

Courts have pingponged back and forth on the law’s enforceability over several weeks. The Justice Department’s move comes after a panel of federal appellate judges ordered late Thursday that the ban will remain in place while its constitutionality is decided.

[…]

“The Supreme Court needs to step in and stop this madness. It’s unconscionable that the Fifth Circuit stayed such a well-reasoned decision that allowed constitutionally protected services to return in Texas,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.

When Texas abortion providers originally made an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before the law went into effect, the court denied their request to stop the law’s enforcement in a 5-4 vote.

Abortion advocates remain unsure of what the Supreme Court will do and if it will ultimately uphold the precedent of Roe v. Wade’s landmark decision in a case out of Mississippi that the court will begin hearing Dec. 1.

See here for the previous update. Not much to add here, either SCOTUS does the right thing or we continue to be screwed by a bunch of partisan hacks in robes who will always arrive at their preferred outcome regardless of the facts. What do you think all those references to the Fifth Circuit’s super-duper conservatism are telling us, anyway? And yes, the Fifth Circuit’s opinion here is highly questionable:

.
1. Last night’s Fifth Circuit order granting Texas’s application to stay the injunction against enforcement of #SB8 in US v. TX includes exactly one sentence of analysis — that relief is compelled by the Fifth Circuit and #SCOTUS rulings in Jackson.

Here’s why that’s just wrong:

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) 8:37 AM – 15 October 2021

Click over to read the rest. The Current has more.

Was it ever in doubt?

Texas’ near-total abortion ban can continue to be enforced while the law’s constitutionality is decided, a panel of federal appellate judges ordered late Thursday.

The three justices of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — considered perhaps the most conservative appellate court in the nation — also agreed to hear oral arguments in the underlying lawsuit the Biden administration filed against Texas over the law.

A U.S. district court previously blocked enforcement of the law for two days before the 5th Circuit initially froze the order. The panel of 5th Circuit justices agreed in a 2-1 decision Thursday to let the law remain in effect until it considers the U.S. Department of Justice’s challenge. Judge Carl Stewart dissented.

The decision means the appellate court will take over the legal challenge to Senate Bill 8 that was being overseen by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman.

Oral arguments before the 5th Circuit have not yet been scheduled, but it could be months before they take place.

[…]

The 5th Circuit already issued an emergency stay in late August to stop district court proceedings and cancel a hearing in another lawsuit challenging Texas’ abortion law. That case was brought on by abortion providers and also overseen by Pitman. The 5th Circuit is set to hear oral arguments in the abortion providers’ case no earlier than December.

The same panel of 5th Circuit judges will consider both cases.

See here, here, and here for the background, and here for a copy of the order. This was what we all expected – I mean, just look at who comprised the panel, if you know who these justices are – but it still sucks. The next logical step is an emergency appeal to SCOTUS, because it’s offensive and ridiculous to continue to allow this travesty of a law to remain in effect. No guarantees there, of course, but at least there’s a chance. This one was never really in question.

I’m sure they expect the usual room service from the appeals court. It’s just a matter of how quickly they can get it.

Texas asked a federal appeals court Friday to step in “as soon as possible” to restore the state’s near-total abortion ban.

The state filed its emergency request for an appeal two days after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked the new abortion law in response to a lawsuit brought by the Biden administration. The state quickly filed a notice of its intent to appeal after Pitman’s order on Wednesday night.

In Friday’s request, state attorneys argue that Pitman’s order to temporarily block the law at the United States’ request “violates the separation of powers at every turn.” They ask the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — considered to be perhaps the nation’s most conservative appellate court — to stop Pitman’s order.

State attorneys argued the U.S. overstepped by suing the state since it will never be subject to one of the lawsuits allowed by the law and since the state does not enforce the law directly.

“This Court’s immediate intervention is necessary to vindicate Texas’s sovereign interest in preventing a single federal district court from superintending every Texas court,” attorneys wrote in Friday’s request.

[…]

“I think there is a very good chance the court grants a stay [to block Pitman’s order],” Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, said in an email. He said Pitman already faced many barriers to issuing his temporary order.

“Congress never authorized the United States to sue a state in this context,” Blackman explained. “And there is no history of previous suits by the federal government against an allegedly unconstitutional law. The federal government lacks a ‘cause of action’ to sue Texas.”

See here for the background. I dunno, I figure if a law can be passed to take away a right in such a way that it’s basically impossible to challenge it in court, then it wasn’t actually a right to begin with. And if a state can take away a federal right like that, it sure seems like a design flaw in the system. I don’t expect the Fifth Circuit to give a damn about that, but someone had to say it. By the way, even with this initial court ruling, the right that was taken away still hasn’t really been restored, and who knows when it might be. Like I said, if that can happen to someone’s rights, then was there ever really such a thing as “rights”?

UPDATE: Room service indeed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granted a temporary emergency stay in the United States v. Texas, the federal government’s suit against the state. As a result of the 5th Circuit’s ruling, a preliminary injunction — which halted the SB 8 from being enforced — no longer stands, and the vast majority of all abortions are once again banned in Texas.

The 5th Circuit has given the federal Justice Department until 5 p.m. CT on Tuesday to respond to Friday night’s action. The Justice Department will need to prepare its argument to counter Texas’ request that such a stay be a permanent one.

When I said that the Fifth Circuit already had an order printed and ready to go staying Judge Pitman’s order? I was only half-joking. Next, we’ll get to see if SCOTUS meant what they said about “procedurally proper challenges” maybe being more successful. The Chron has more.

Some justice for now, but we’ll see how long it lasts.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Texas’ near-total abortion ban Wednesday as part of a lawsuit the Biden administration launched against the state over its new law that bars abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy.

But it’s unclear how U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman’s order may affect access to abortions in the state — or if it will at all. The state of Texas quickly filed a notice of appeal and will almost definitely seek an emergency stay of Pitman’s order in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is known as perhaps the nation’s most conservative appellate court.

In a press release, the ACLU of Texas pointed to the uncertainty on how Wednesday’s order and the state’s appeal will affect procedures in the state.

“Though the court’s ruling offers a sigh of relief, the threat of Texas’ abortion ban still looms over the state as cases continue to move through the courts. We already know the politicians behind this law will stop at nothing until they’ve banned abortion entirely,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project said in a statement. “This fight is far from over, and we’re ready to do everything we can to make sure every person can get the abortion care they need regardless of where they live or how much they make.”

Until Pitman’s order, Texas’ new law successfully flouted the constitutional right to have an abortion before fetal viability established by Roe v. Wade in 1973 and subsequent rulings. That’s because it leaves enforcement of the new restrictions not to state officials but instead to private citizens filing lawsuits through the civil court system.

The order from Pitman — a 2014 Obama nominee — forbids state court judges and court clerks from accepting lawsuits that the law allows. Pitman ordered the state to publish his order on all “public-facing court websites with a visible, easy-to-understand instruction to the public that S.B. 8 lawsuits will not be accepted by Texas courts.”

He called the case “exceptional” and ordered that the state and “any other persons or entities acting on its behalf” be blocked from enforcing the statute. He acknowledged that his order could be appealed in another court and added: “this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”

[…]

Pitman gave a scathing response to Texas’ request that the court allow it to seek an appeal prior to blocking the law’s enforcement.

“The State has forfeited the right to any such accommodation by pursuing an unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right,” Pitman wrote in his order. “From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution.”

Despite the threat of retroactive lawsuits, the Center for Reproductive Rights said the clinics and doctors it represents “hope to resume full abortion services as soon as they are able.” The organization acknowledged that the order is temporary and expected the state would appeal — but called the ruling a “critical first step.”

“For 36 days, patients have been living in a state of panic, not knowing where or when they’d be able to get abortion care,” Nancy Northup, president & CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement Wednesday. “The cruelty of this law is endless.”

Whole Woman’s Health said it was making plans “as soon as possible” to resume abortions outlawed under Texas’ law.

“This is AMAZING. It’s the justice we have been seeking for weeks,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said in a statement.

See here for the previous update. We didn’t have to wait long for this ruling, but it will be likely even less time before the rogue Fifth Circuit steps in and does its damage. After that, we’ll see if SCOTUS still claims to be confused by this issue, or if they have decided to care about the constitution.

Slate provides some highlights from Judge Pitman’s opinion.

The DOJ’s bet that agents of the state could be subject to suit paid off, particularly in the face of mounting evidence that pregnant Texans had been materially harmed as a result of the law. Pitman’s decision has moments of powerful rhetoric, but it is largely devoted to the “complex and novel” threshold issues the majority of the Supreme Court was too exhausted to probe when they allowed the law to stand. “There can be no doubt that S.B. 8 was a deliberate attempt by lawmakers,” he wrote, to “preclude review by federal courts that have the obligation to safeguard the very rights the statute likely violates.” This effort failed, he noted, because the United States has standing to represent its citizens in their effort “to vindicate federal rights.” On behalf of these citizens, it also has authority to enforce the 14th Amendment against a state attempting to “supersede” it. As Pitman put it, “when the machinations of the state effectively cut off private access to the federal courts,” the scheme warrants “equitable action by the United States.”

Because the DOJ clears these hurdles, Pitman wrote, it had properly challenged S.B. 8. And on the merits, there is no question as to foundational facts: Texas’ law plainly violates Roe because it outlaws abortions well before fetal viability. In order to block the law, Pitman crafted an injunction to “halt existing S.B. lawsuits and prevent new suits from being maintained by the state judiciary.” He forbade state judges and clerks from “accepting or docketing” these cases, and, for good measure, barred “private individuals who act on behalf of the state” from filing them. Finally, he ordered Texas to “publish this preliminary injunction on all of its public-facing court websites with a visible, easy-to-understand instruction to the public that S.B. 8 lawsuits will not be accepted by Texas courts.”

Notably, Pitman denied Texas’ request for an immediate stay of his decision. “The State has forfeited the right to any such accommodation by pursuing an unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right,” he explained. To be clear, this hardly means Texas clinics will begin providing constitutionally protected abortions services tomorrow. If Pitman’s decision is eventually overturned, doctors who perform abortions in the interim can still be sued. But at least for now, the playing field tilts against the states too-clever-by-half effort to harm women while skirting judicial review.

I’ll be shocked if the Fifth Circuit allows this to stand going into the weekend, but for now we’re in a better place. Daily Kos, The 19th, the Chron, and the Trib have more.