It took less than 48 hours for Texas AG Ken Paxton to find Trump-appointed appeals court judges to reinstate Texas's ridiculous abortion ban after a federal judge blocked it on Thursday, and as of this morning, anyone can once again take out a $10,000 state-sponsored bounty on anyone else involved in an abortion in the state.
A federal appeals court late Friday reinstated the nation’s most restrictive abortion law, which bars the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit granted a request filed Friday afternoon by the Texas attorney general to temporarily suspend a judge’s order blocking the law, which has halted most abortions in the state.
Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) had asked the appeals court to reverse the injunction by U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman, who sided with the Biden administration Wednesday night and characterized the abortion ban as an “unprecedented and aggressive scheme to deprive its citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right.”
A three-judge panel of the conservative-leaning court gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. Tuesday to respond to the appeal.
Paxton told the appeals court that the Justice Department has no legal authority to sue the state and said the appeals court must intervene immediately to lift the injunction. The lower-court judge overstepped, Paxton said, by halting a law that is enforced by private citizens, not state government officials.
“A court ‘cannot lawfully enjoin the world at large’ let alone hold Texas responsible for the filings of private citizens that Texas is powerless to prevent,” the filing states.
It asked the court to rule on that issue by Tuesday morning and to temporarily suspend Pitman’s injunction “as soon as possible.”
The brief order from the 5th Circuit, issued about five hours after the appeal was filed, did not rule on the merits of the state’s request. Any decision from the 5th Circuit could put the issue back before the Supreme Court, which declined to block the law when it took effect Sept. 1 but said it raises serious constitutional questions.
"You can't stop us because we're only allowing citizens to enforce the law and not the state!" is so stupidly, wildly dangerous that it constitutes codified mob rule. Texas could turn anything into a citizen-enforced bounty: law enforcement, border enforcement, school protection, voting observation, whatever.
In a state with open carry like Texas, it's a recipe for absolute vigilante law, only the state's willing to pay up taxpayer funds for letters of marque. It's state-sponsored terrorism of women.
Of course Trump Republicans love it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment