Elie Mystal: This Is How You Smack Down Texas's Abortion Ban

[Nevilledog]

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🎃Imani Gandy Corn🎃
@AngryBlackLady
Not only is this piece by @ElieNYC typically brilliant, but I noticed that he's started using "pregnant people" and I'm legit proud. Thank you, Elie. #SB8

This Is How You Smack Down Texas’s Abortion Ban

This Is How You Smack Down Texas’s Abortion Ban
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Texas suspended SB8. His ruling offers a step-by-step legal guide to striking down the law for good.
thenation.com
8:34 AM · Oct 8, 2021

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/texas-abortion-ban-block/

It is difficult to explain the extent to which Texas’s Senate Bill 8—which bans abortions after six weeks of gestation and empowers private bounty hunters to sue anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion—is unconstitutional and lawless. Even calling the law “unconstitutional” is like calling the Marianas Trench “deep”: It’s true, but it fails to capture the abysmal quality of the thing. I feel I lack the vocabulary to describe how bad SB 8 is, but US District Judge Robert Pitman gave it a try. On Wednesday, he ordered a temporary injunction suspending enforcement of SB 8 and dedicated 113 pages to explaining why.

This week’s decision is not the first time Pitman has pushed back against SB 8. He denied Texas’s motion to dismiss a case brought by Texas abortion provider Whole Women’s Health over the summer, before the law took effect. But he was overruled by the radically conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and eventually the Supreme Court of the United States.

With that law now in effect, and pregnant people in Texas systematically denied access to their constitutional rights, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice sued Texas for its brazen violation of constitutional law. That gave Judge Pitman another opportunity to rule SB 8 unconstitutional, which he did this week.

Most likely, Pitman will be overruled by the Fifth Circuit. Soon. Perhaps by the time I’m finished writing this sentence. But when the seemingly inevitable conservative clapback comes, you should know that the conservative courts will be acting in service of their political agendas, unbound by strictures of law. We know that because in his decision Judge Pitman explained the common understanding of “how the law works,” which seems to have escaped conservatives on the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court, and then illustrated how SB 8 clearly violates basic legal principles.

*snip*

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I think what he says is a law no one has standing to challenge is tyranny.

[Hamlette]

2. interesting footnote on page one

The Amici States are Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia,
Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the Attorney General
of North Carolina Joshua H. Stein. (Dkt. 9)

So, does NC have a sane AG? Anyone know?

[Tanuki]

3. Yes, the NC AG is Democrat, Josh Stein.

He has a very good record.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Stein

[Hamlette]

4. good on him