The Road To Gilead, Con't

Attorney General Merrick Garland is suing Texas over its ridiculous abortion law that looks to get around Roe v. Wade by deputizing citizens to flood abortion providers and women with civil lawsuits, and despite the Supreme Court pretending to be too shocked to actually block the law last week, the Justice Department isn't letting this one go unchallenged.

The Justice Department has filed suit against the state of Texas to block its law banning most abortions, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday, setting up a high-stakes legal battle after the Supreme Court allowed the law to go into effect earlier this month.

"That act is clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent," Garland said at a news conference. "Those precedents hold, in the words of Planned Parenthood versus Casey, that 'regardless of whether exceptions are made for particular circumstances, a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability.'"

He accused Texas Republicans of crafting a "statutory scheme" through the law "to nullify the Constitution of the United States."

"It does not rely on the state's executive branch to enforce the law, as is the norm in Texas and everywhere else. Rather, the snatcher deputizes all private citizens without any showing a personal connection or injury to serve as bounty hunters authorized to recover at least $10,000 per claim from individuals who facilitate a woman's exercise of our constitutional rights," he said.

As part of its lawsuit, Garland said the DOJ is seeking an immediate court order preventing the enforcement of SB8 in Texas.

Garland also made clear that the Justice Department won't hesitate to take similar legal action against other states that might pursue a similar route to restrict abortions.

"The additional risk here is that other states will follow similar models," Garland said, and he denied that the decision to file the suit now was in any way based on political pressure from Democrats or the White House.

The lawsuit accuses Texas lawmakers of enacting the law "in open defiance of the Constitution."

"The United States has the authority and responsibility to ensure that Texas cannot evade its obligations under the Constitution and deprive individuals of their constitutional rights by adopting a statutory scheme designed specifically to evade traditional mechanisms of federal judicial review," the lawsuit says. "The federal government therefore brings this suit directly against the State of Texas to obtain a declaration that S.B. 8 is invalid, to enjoin its enforcement, and to protect the rights that Texas has violated."

 

We'll see how quickly the courts act upon this, but yes, this is going to get ugly fast would be my guess. After all, the Roberts Court has already signaled the end of Roe and the end of abortion for about half of American women. States will be able to legislate it out of existence, and I'm expecting for states like Florida and Texas to make crossing state lines to get an abortion illegal as well, although that goes directly to the Commerce Clause having a hole blasted in it too by the Roberts Court.

It won't be long, either way.