Welp.
A Galveston County man has filed a lawsuit against a California doctor he accuses of providing abortion-inducing pills to his partner, leveraging for the first time a new Texas law that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers for up to $100,000.
In July, Jerry Rodriguez filed the original lawsuit that accused Dr. Remy Coeytaux of providing his girlfriend with abortion pills at the direction of her ex-husband.
The lawsuit alleges the woman’s ex-husband ordered the abortion pills from Coeytaux. Subsequently, Rodriguez’ girlfriend took the pills and terminated a pregnancy on Sept.19, 2024 and another pregnancy in January 2025. Rodriguez claims in the lawsuit that he was the father in those pregnancies.
On Sunday, Rodriguez, through his lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, who helped design Texas’ abortion ban, updated the lawsuit, largely stating the same allegations against Coeytaux. However, this time, Mitchell included House Bill 7 as an additional tool to compel Coeytaux to pay $75,000 in minimum damages, plus other fees, Rodriguez is asking for and to stop prescribing or providing abortion-inducing drugs in Texas.
HB 7, which went into effect Dec. 4, allows private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails or provides abortion medication to or from Texas.
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Texas has sued two out-of-state abortion pill providers in New York and Delaware for violating Texas’ abortion laws, but New York and Delaware have shield laws which protect medical providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions. While the Delaware lawsuit was filed last week, a New York judge dismissed Texas’ case in October.
California has similar shield laws, which could also protect Coeytaux, legal experts have said.
California’s shield law could also allow Coeytaux to countersue Rodriguez, but in Sunday’s update, Mitchell pointed out language that Texas lawmakers wrote into HB 7 that prevents such counteractions.
The lawsuit also alleges Coeytaux is in violation of the Comstock Act, an 18th Century anti-obscenity law. The Comstock Act has not been enforced for more than a hundred years, with some legal experts arguing it’s entirely unenforceable as a result, while others, including Mitchell, argue it can be used to federally criminalize mailing abortion pills.
See here for some background on the original lawsuit by these same miscreants. It’s not clear to me why a law that now allows any old jagoff to file one of these suits instead of leaving it to the professional jagoffs in the AG’s office changes the fact that Dr. Coeytaux’s actions are legal in the state where he resides, but I Am Not A Lawyer so take that for what it’s worth. The main point here is that these guys are never going to stop, this is all part of a coordinated strategy to impose red state laws on blue states, and it’s all on the increasingly long list of shit that needs to be undone with extreme prejudice at the first opportunity. In the meantime, we wait and see what the courts make of this.