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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCould Texas abortion ban strategy be double-edged sword?
The unusual legal strategy used to ban most abortions in Texas is already increasingly being employed in Republican-led states to target pornography, LGBT rights and other hot-button cultural issuesSALT LAKE CITY (AP) The unusual legal strategy used to ban most abortions in Texas is already increasingly being employed in Republican-led states to target pornography, LGBT rights and other hot-button cultural issues.
While private residents filing lawsuits is a fixture of some arenas like environmental law, some warn that expanding it and applying it to new areas could have a boomerang effect if Democrats were to use it on issues like gun control.
When Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice would sue over the Texas law, he said it could become a model for action in other areas, by other states, and with respect to other constitutional rights and protections. He worried about the damage that would be done to our society if states were allowed to implement laws and empower any private individual to infringe on anothers constitutional rights.
The concept has already popped up in other states, including on issues like abortion where courts have sided against laws backed by conservatives.
Read more: https://www.itemonline.com/texas/could-texas-abortion-ban-strategy-be-double-edged-sword/article_955b2ee8-de9d-5b9b-9418-854b6c46aafd.html
(Huntsville Item)
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)gab13by13
(20,867 posts)uponit7771
(90,225 posts)... what they've done here is disgusting.
Another reason to expand the court
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)a Vermont gun manufacturer because a child was shot in Idaho, or a Kentucky mining company for its illegal slurry pits, that everyone has "standing" regardless of injury does sound like a nightmare for Republicans. And everyone else.
Fun thoughts, but it seems incredibly unlikely that this SCOTUS will find this law constitutional, for a variety of reasons apparently, but including this bizarre expansion of the idea of what it is to have standing to sue.
Ford_Prefect
(7,828 posts)But others point out the tactic could come back to haunt Republicans who have long sought to limit the size of court settlements in things like medical malpractice cases.
If a wide-ranging civil-enforcement tactic were applied to gun control, for example, it could allow people to sue gun sellers if the weapon was used to hurt someone, said Texas attorney Michelle Simpson Tuegel, who sued to block the abortion law.
This law in Texas is a double-edged sword for Republicans," she said. "It's potentially really dangerous for them to be pushing something like this forward with other issues that could be turned on them in a similar way.
bucolic_frolic
(42,678 posts)Last edited Sun Sep 12, 2021, 08:30 AM - Edit history (1)
with everyone armed to the teeth.
And I just don't think you have very good regulation of anything if it's left to puritanical snitches and haphazard, unevenly applied lawsuits. You want to use the government to enforce? I guess, politically, you can do that if you have the majority and can get the courts to pass muster. But turning hot-button issues into people vs. people, neighbor vs. neighbor, families vs. families issue is ripe for violence. It's a potential Hatfield-McCoy landscape.
This is regulation and fear by stealth. It's not a government, it's a private regulatory scheme executed by hate-filled spies who can't mind their own business.
Girard442
(6,059 posts)You know how that works. If you're white, you can stand your ground when someone walking down the street makes a "furtive move toward his waistband" but if you're a POC, you can't ever. Not even when the Klan is burning a cross on your lawn and actually firing into your house.
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)It's Larkin v. Grendel's Den, Inc., 459 U.S. 116 (1982). It basically says that the state cannot hand over to private entities powers which are ordinarily reserved to the government. This would appear to make it illegal for private citizens to bring suit.
See https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/459/116/ for a write-up.
LeftInTX
(24,560 posts)StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)The facts of that case were very different - in that case, private entities were given a veto power over the issuance of liquor licenses, a state responsibility, and therefore, were allowed to essentially step into the place of the state in determining to whom the state would issue licenses.
The situation in Texas is different. The state hasn't directly delegate any of its authority to individuals since the state doesn't have the authority to sue people for aiding and abetting abortions. Instead, the state created a new private right of action allowing individuals to sue other people for acts that are neither criminal nor tortious.
It certainly can be argued that Because the state does have some authority to restrict abortions and the private right of action is clearly designed to limit a woman's ability to obtain abortions this is a roundabout way to pass on that authority to private citizens and therefore Larkin applies. But it's a more complicated and difficult argument to make.
That said, even though the holding in Larkin is not directly applicable to this case, I do think the reasoning the Court used to get to its holding is very helpful and can be applied to this situation, and, if it is, it would lead to the same outcome as Larkin