Abortion funds in Texas take legal action

[TexasTowelie]

Even after passing Senate Bill 8, anti-abortion activists are still yearning to take their extremism to a new level by targeting abortion funds in Texas. Now, two abortion funds in Texas have filed their own lawsuits as a legal counter.

Last week, the Lilith Fund and Texas Equal Access Fund announced that they had filed a series of lawsuits against two rightwing organizations and two private citizens. The two organizations they are suing are the Thomas More Society and the America First Legal Foundation (AFLF), which was started by several members of the Trump Administration including Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows.

Earlier this year, lawyers with AFLF filed investigatory depositions against two employees of the Lilith Fund and TEA Fund arguing that they had helped individuals obtain abortions when SB 8 had a temporary injunction. In the suit against AFLF, lawyers working on behalf of the abortion funds argued that they were facing, “imminent and existential threats to the fundamental and constitutional rights of plaintiffs, their staff, their volunteers and their donors.”

SB 8 is not just an abortion ban, it’s also a law based on citizen vigilantism and bounties. It allows virtually anyone to file a lawsuit against an abortion provider or any person they believe aided or abetted an abortion.

Read more: https://texassignal.com/abortion-funds-in-texas-take-legal-action/

[Budi]

1. K & R

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I still don't understand why this TX law is allowed to exist.

How do you prove standing for the vigilantes? What harm is there in is getting abortion and/or helping a woman get an abortion when you're a stranger, unrelated to the situation? All lawsuits require standing. It's in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing

Standing in State Court
A state's statutes will determine what constitutes standing in that particular state's courts. These typically revolve around the requirement that plaintiffs have sustained or will sustain direct injury or harm and that this harm is redressable.

Standing in Federal Court
At the federal level, legal actions cannot be brought simply on the ground that an individual or group is displeased with a government action or law. Federal courts only have constitutional authority to resolve actual disputes (see Case or Controversy).

In Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (90-1424), 504 U.S. 555 (1992), the Supreme Court created a three-part test to determine whether a party has standing to sue:

The plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact," meaning that the injury is of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent.

There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct brought before the court
It must be likely, rather than speculative, that a favorable decision by the court will redress the injury.

[NNadir]

3. Um, because Trump appointed unqualified religious bigots and thugs to the Supreme Court. n/t.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. This will be fun to watch