After yesterday's Supreme Court hearing, it occurs to me...
...Texas may not have only shot itself in the foot, but it may have blown it to shreds.
I'm not a lawyer, but it sounded to me like the majority of justices agreed that there no way a scheme that's concocted to avoid judicial review can stand. Still, there's matter of having a constitutional basis on which to strike SB8 down. It's not enough to say it's unfair; there has to be legal reasoning to overturn the law. Because the law tried to use private individuals to bring suit against other individuals there's only one precedent I can think of (because I'm not a legal scholar either) they can turn to in order to invalid SB8.
That precedent would be Griswold v. Connecticut, the very case that established a right to privacy, of which Roe is a progeny. I can't think of any other case the Court could simply turn to since this involves the behavior of one citizen toward another. The only answer to the Texas law is a person is entitled to be left alone when not encroaching on the rights of another.
I'm sure there are lawyers who can correct me, but the remedy to SB8 has put the justices in a box they will have to go to some very strange lengths to get out of if they want to avoid using this precedent, something they would have never wanted to do if they were bent on overturning Roe. Is it possible SB8 might wind up strengthening abortion rights?
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