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December 10th, 2022:

“Heartbeat” lawsuit against doctor dismissed

Dec 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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I’d forgotten this was still a thing, it had been so long since it was filed.

In the first test of the Texas law that empowers private citizens to sue for a minimum of $10,000 in damages over any illegal abortion they discover, a state judge Thursday dismissed a case against a San Antonio abortion provider, finding that the state constitution requires proof of injury as grounds to file a suit.

Ruling from the bench, Bexar County Judge Aaron Haas dismissed the suit filed by Chicagoan Felipe Gomez against Dr. Alan Braid who had admitted in a Washington Post op-ed that he violated the state’s then-six-week ban, Senate Bill 8, which allows for civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an unlawful abortion.

Thursday’s ruling does not overturn the law or preclude similar suits from being filed in the future, lawyers for Braid said Thursday. Nor does it change the almost-total ban on abortion that went into effect in Texas when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal abortion protections earlier this year.

“This is the first SB 8 case that has gone to a ruling, a final judgment,” said Marc Hearron, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which was part of Braid’s legal team. “It doesn’t necessarily stop other people from filing SB 8 lawsuits, but what we expect is other courts, following this judge’s lead, would say if you weren’t injured, if you’re just a stranger trying to enforce SB 8, courts are going to reject your claims because you don’t have standing.”

[…]

Haas said in court he would issue a written order in the next week, Hearron said. Gomez declined to comment until the ruling is finalized, though he said he would appeal the ruling. Gomez, who had no prior connection to Braid according to court filings, has said that he believed SB 8 was “illegal as written” given that Roe v. Wade hadn’t yet been overturned at the time, and he requested the court declare it unconstitutional.

Gomez told the Chicago Tribune after filing the suit that his purpose was not to profit from it, but rather to highlight the hypocrisy of Texas lawmakers when it comes to mandates on the state’s citizens.

“Part of my focus on this is the dichotomy between a government saying you can’t force people to get a shot or wear a mask and at the same time, trying to tell women whether or not they can or can’t get an abortion,” Gomez said. “To me, it’s inconsistent.”

The law, which was the most restrictive abortion law in the country when it went into effect in September 2021, purports to give anyone the standing to sue over an abortion prior to six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most patients know they’re pregnant.

The state later banned virtually all abortions except those that threaten a mother’s life, with violations by anyone who provides the procedure or assists someone in obtaining one punishable by up to life in prison. Abortion patients are exempt from prosecution under the law.

Haas agreed with plaintiffs that the constitutional standard is that a person must be able to prove they were directly impacted to sue over an abortion, Hearron said.

See here, here, and here for the background. According to the Trib, there were three lawsuits filed against Dr. Braid, but this was the only one served to him, so I believe that means there are no other active lawsuits of this kind still out there. It’s a little wild to look back and realize that this awful law ultimately led to so little direct action, but it most definitely had a chilling effect, and it set a terrible precedent that SCOTUS shrugged its shoulders at in the most cowardly way possible.

Dr. Braid’s intent, in performing the abortion and writing the op-ed that practically invited these lawsuits, was to challenge SB8’s legality on the grounds that Roe v Wade was the law of the land and thus SB8 was facially unconstitutional when it was passed. You could still make that argument now – a similar lawsuit in another state (I’m blanking on the details) hinged on that same point and prevailed in court – but in the end it wouldn’t much matter, as Texas’ so-called “trigger” law has gone even farther than SB8 did. I’m also not sure that Judge Haas’ ruling will stand on appeal, since it seems clear that the point of SB8 was that literally anyone had the standing to sue. But maybe the Texas Supreme Court will agree that “standing” does mean something less expansive than that. Again, it’s basically an academic exercise now, but you never know. And if anything about this makes the forced-birth caucus in the Lege unhappy, they’ll just pass another law to get what they want. My head hurts. Reform Austin has more.

So why wasn’t that report on maternal mortality released when it was supposed to be?

Dec 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We’ll never really know, mostly because there’s no one with the power to compel an answer from those who do know that cares enough to use that power.

State health officials had completed a long-awaited report on maternal deaths and were preparing talking points about the findings just days before it was shelved until after the November midterms, according to emails obtained by Hearst Newspapers.

The messages suggest that the agency was moving toward a required Sept. 1 release of the state’s first updated count of pregnancy-related deaths in nearly a decade.

On Sept. 2, however, then-Commissioner John Hellerstedt, an appointee of Gov. Greg Abbott, said the agency needed more time to complete the analysis.

The last-minute delay infuriated maternal health experts who have spent years pressing the state to update its sluggish data review process. Members of the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, which analyzes pregnancy-related deaths, said they were given no heads up about the announcement.

Advocates have since accused Gov. Abbott of instigating the delay in an effort to protect his re-election chances in the midterms.

Some of the strongest condemnation over the hold-up has come from the Black community, where women are three times more likely to die from childbirth than white women. This year’s report would be the state’s first to analyze the causes behind racial disparities among those who die during or after childbirth.

While it’s true that the agency had not completed a full count as of September, as Hellerstedt said, a draft preliminary report on the majority of 2019 deaths was finished and in the final stages of editing, according to the emails. It has been the agency’s practice for years to release findings even before a full analysis is completed, in an effort to speed up public health interventions.

Agency staff were sharing final versions of the draft as late as Aug. 24, according to the emails.

Earlier that month, the health agency had been preparing to brief Abbott’s office and state legislators about the report’s findings.

See here for the background. There are answers to this question – they may vary depending on who is being asked, but they do exist. The problem is that no one who is being asked cares to answer, and no one who wants that answer has the power to make them give one. The people who do have that power – certainly the Legislature and maybe the Attorney General – don’t care any more about it than Greg Abbott does. So, unless someone like former Commissioner Hellerstedt starts telling tales out of school, we’ll never know. In the meantime, we may finally get that report as soon as this coming week, so at least we have that going for us.

In which I ponder the future of cryptomining

Dec 10th, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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I know I’m stepping away from things I have knowledge and experience with when I comment on stories like this, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Beleaguered crypto lenders are being dealt another blow from Bitcoin miners as they weather the aftermath of the FTX collapse.

Miners, who raised as much as $4 billion from mining-equipment financing when profit margins were as high as 90%, are defaulting on loans and sending hundreds of thousands of machines that served as collateral back to lenders. New York Digital Investment Group, Celsius Network, BlockFi Inc., Galaxy Digital, and the Foundry unit of Digital Currency Group were among the biggest providers of funding to finance computer equipment and build data centers.

The liquidity crunch hitting digital-asset markets after FTX failed comes as low Bitcoin prices, soaring energy costs and more competition weigh on miners. Loans backed by the computer equipment, known as rigs, had become one of the industry’s most popular financing tools. Many lenders are now likely facing substantial losses since they can’t seize any other assets besides the machines, whose value has dropped by as much as 85% since last November.

“People were pouring dollars into the mining space,” said Ethan Vera, chief operations officer at crypto-mining services firm Luxor Technologies. “Miners ended up dictating a lot of the loan terms, so the financiers moved ahead with a lot of the deals where only the machines were collateral.”

[…]

There is likely to be more defaults. Compared to the publicly-listed miners, private companies currently contribute about 75% of the computing power for the entire Bitcoin network and most of their rig-backed loans with the lenders remain undisclosed, according to data from Luxor. Additional loans will likely come under stress if more private large-scale miners such as Compute North file for bankruptcy.

“There hasn’t necessarily been the best due diligence on whether a miner was credit worthy or not,” said Matthew Kimmell, digital asset analyst at crypto investment firm CoinShares.

While miners tend to default when they are cash-depleted, some companies may have decided to stop paying the loans even if they still have cash on balance sheets, according to Luxor’s Vera. The collateral can be worth less now than the remaining payments for some miners.

“It could be an economic decision to walk away from the financing deals,” Vera said. “Miners are focused on how to survive the next six months rather than if they need the lender for the next five years.”

The miners use powerful energy-guzzling computers to secure the Bitcoin blockchain by validating transaction data and earn rewards in the form of the token. Bitcoin has tumbled about 75% since reaching an all-time high in November 2021.

I swear, I’m not going to start blogging about cryptocurrency on the regular, and I don’t know any more about it than the average idiot does. It’s just that when I read a story like this, I think about the rapid growth of cryptocurrency mining in Texas, which is happening primarily in rural areas, and I wonder if they’re about to see their bubble burst. I’m very much a crypto skeptic and this kind of news is right in line with my priors, so I need to be wary of reading too much into it. If there is a crash in the cryptomining business, which would have negative effects in Texas, then at least we can say we had some warning. If not, I’ll know better than to blog about stuff like this in the future.