Ex-Attorney on House Arrest Might Blow Up Texas Abortion Law

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The men who designed Texas’s recently implemented ban on most abortions were devilishly smart to come up with a vigilante enforcement scheme that relies on people suing abortion providers, which made judicial review of the law difficult enough for the Supreme Court to turn down a chance to note its blatantly unconstitutional character. And so for a couple of weeks, it looked like a stalemate between abortion providers afraid of being sued and a disciplined anti-abortion movement wary of filing a lawsuit that would get the law reviewed and frozen by the courts. But the lawmakers may have gone too far by enabling lawsuits by any old yahoo, even those living out of state, who knows how to find a Texas courthouse.

Over the weekend, Dr. Alan Braid, a San Antonio OB/GYN seeking to force judicial review of SB 8, announced in a Washington Post piece that he had violated the law. And now, an apparently disbarred attorney living on house arrest in Arkansas has filed the first enforcement suit against the physician. As the Post reports, Oscar Stilley, “a former lawyer convicted of tax fraud in 2010,” has filed suit in San Antonio alleging that Braid violated SB 8, which he fully admits. Between the two of them, it seems they’ll get judicial review of the law under way.

What makes this turn of events especially rich is that Stilley isn’t even “personally opposed” to abortion, he told the Post, and thus isn’t getting any right-to-life emails urging true believers to cool it on enforcement suits for now. He professes to believe, like any lawyer (or former lawyer) might, that the law, which violates 48 years of Supreme Court precedents, deserves judicial review. He also wouldn’t mind some of the sweet bonus money the law provides to vigilantes: “If the state of Texas decided it’s going to give a $10,000 bounty, why shouldn’t I get that 10,000 bounty?” He probably needs it since he’s currently serving a 15-year sentence on home confinement for his tax issues. His complaint in the Texas court, actually, makes it clear this “disbarred and disgraced lawyer” is probably just seeking attention for his claims about “the baseless felony conviction and sentence that has placed him in various federal prisons, and now on home confinement.” That’s what enabling random litigants will get you. It also appears that another man from Illinois, who has described himself as a “pro-choice plaintiff,” has filed a similar suit against Braid.

Assuming this isn’t some revival of Li’l Abner that has jumped into real life, the next step would be for someone (possibly Attorney General Merrick Garland) to file suit in federal district court to enjoin Stilley’s suit, which would get the ball rolling toward the law itself being frozen pending review before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court. We’ll see if the legal tricksters who devised this law or the judges who are winking at it have another move up their sleeves.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ex-attorney-on-house-arrest-might-blow-up-texas-abortion-law/ar-AAOE7kv

[cstanleytech]

1. I'm waiting for people to start filing lawsuits against the Republican legislators as

they will have to respond if sued or risk losing and if I recall they are barred from trying to counter sue for the cost to mount a defense assuming I remember the law correctly.
Either way they will be out money.

[CrispyQ]

2. So this one doctor can be sued by an unlimited number of people?

Or is it first come, first serve?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Texas abortion opponents are furious someone is taking advantage of their bounty hunter law

The assholes who wrote this law are pissed in that this case allows the law to be challenged in court. I bet the DOJ , the ACLU, SPLC, Panned Parenthood and others will intervene and the plaintiff will not object to such intervention. This will be fun to watch

Link to tweet

This is just a tiny fraction of the circus Texas Republicans invited with this law, but they're somehow surprised and unhappy about it.

According to the legislative director of Texas Right to Life, which lobbied for the bounty hunter law, "Neither of these lawsuits are valid attempts to save innocent human lives." You don't say! Instead, he continued, "Both cases are self-serving legal stunts, abusing the cause of action created in the Texas Heartbeat Act for their own purposes."

As the law you promoted invites. This was 100% predictable, baked into the very design of the Texas abortion ban. Anyone claiming to be surprised at the quality of the initial efforts to collect the $10,000 bounty is mind-bendingly stupid, or they're lying.

The geniuses over at Texas Right to Life also "believe Braid published his Op-Ed intending to attract imprudent lawsuits." Again: You don't say! What tipped them off? Was it the part where he said in a major newspaper that he had broken a law that requires someone harmed by it to challenge its constitutionality in court? In the same op-ed, he wrote, "I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but it's something I believe in strongly. Represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, my clinics are among the plaintiffs in an ongoing federal lawsuit to stop S.B. 8."