TX anti-abortion leader says SB 8 was not intended for lawsuits to ever be filed, just put the fear

[Nevilledog]

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Justin Miller
@justinjm1
Texas anti-abortion leader says SB 8 was not intended for lawsuits to ever be filed, just put the fear of liability into providers

Protesters outside the Supreme Court opposed and supported Texas’ abortion law.
Lawsuits Filed Against Texas Doctor Could Be Best Tests of Abortion Law

Legal experts said two lawsuits filed this week might test the constitutionality of the Texas law more than federal challenges by abortion providers and the Justice Department.
nytimes.com
6:36 AM · Sep 22, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/us/texas-abortion-lawsuits.html

DALLAS — When the United States’ most restrictive abortion law went into effect in Texas on Sept. 1, it worked exactly as intended: It effectively stopped all abortions in the second-most populous state.

But its very ingenuity — that ordinary citizens, and not state officials, enforce it — has begun to unleash lawsuits that are out of the control of the anti-abortion movement that fought for the law.

On Monday, a man in Arkansas and another in Illinois, both disbarred lawyers with no apparent association with anti-abortion activists, filed separate suits against a San Antonio doctor who publicly wrote about performing an abortion. The suits appear to be the first legal actions taken under the law, known as Senate Bill 8, which deputizes private citizens, no matter where they live, to sue doctors or anyone else who “aids and abets” an abortion performed after a fetus’s cardiac activity is detected.

Legal experts said the lawsuits filed in state court might be the most likely way to definitively resolve the constitutionality of the Texas law, which has withstood legal tests. Two more sweeping challenges filed in federal court, brought by abortion providers and the Justice Department, raise difficult procedural questions.

Anti-abortion leaders in Texas said they never expected many people to actually file lawsuits, thinking the process would be too costly and onerous.

*snip*

[vercetti2021]

1. Might have bit off more than you could chew eh fuckwit?

Take away rights of the people, you're going to get severely burned

[gratuitous]

2. Gee, that's not what the law says

Do members of the Texas legislature not understand what it means to enact a law?

[Carlitos Brigante]

3. "Your honor we just wrote that in there as a suggestion..." nt

[Volaris]

8. Yep n now Texas has to go defend in court, the position that the law

Doesnt say, exactly what the law says (that not only anyone, BUT EVERYONE has standing to sue and collect the ten grand).

They're EITHER gonna end up out 20 grand and effectively overturn Roe, or this is gonna blow up in their face (lol guess which is more likley?).

[tanyev]

4. May the blowback be never in their favor.

[Mad_Machine76]

5. Ummm.....oops

[Mr.Bill]

6. So they made a law allowing anyone at all to file a lawsuit

with no finacial exposure at all, but they though nobody would?

The only mystery to me is why tens of thousands of people have not filed them by now.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. The concept of standing to sue is a key element here

The Texas law ignores the law on standing and gives anyone the right to sue. In order to have standing one must be injured or suffer some injury in order to sue. There are long sections in the treatise on con law and civil/federal procedure on the concept of standing and many cases are dismissed due to a lack of standing. The Texas law purports to eliminate the need for standing. This article is cited elsewhere on this thread but this may help explain the concept https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/03/texas-republican-abortion-civil-lawsuits/

Texas’ abortion law goes much further. Typically, in tort law, which is used to compensate people who have been injured, a person must have incurred some sort of personal harm in order to sue someone else. That’s the very nature of what a civil court is intended to remedy in such a case, several legal experts told the Tribune. Texas’ new abortion law, however, gives that privilege to anyone.

Abortion opponents, who support the new law, said that the question of standing, or provable harm in order to bring a lawsuit, is moot because the Legislature has granted it to everyone under SB 8.

“They have standing because the Legislature gives it to them,” said John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life. “You don’t have to be personally harmed.”

Some, though, say the law cuts to the very nature of what a civil court is supposed to do: provide a remedy to a harmed party.

“There’s a sort of irreducible minimum that you have to have before you’re in court, just as a matter of how a court is defined,” Coale said. “And this goes way beyond that.”

Under normal legal principles from first year civil pro, torts and Con law, it is clear that the low life disbarred out of state attorney does not have standing. The assholes who wrote this law are mad because this low life disbarred out of state attorney is almost the perfect plaintiff to illustrate why the concept of standing cannot be ignored.