So, as announced today, the Garland DOJ will Take the State of Texas to Court and apparently the original jurisdiction will be given to Judge Robert Pitman's District Court. I think that is the Western district in Texas, and I believe the Court is in Austin, but I am not absolutely sure about this. What's interesting is that despite this language in Article III Section 2, to wit: "...in those cases where a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have Original Jurisdiction" U.S. v. Texas will first be heard, it seems, in Pitman's District Court. Attorney General Garland is apparently bringing the case against Texas on the grounds that the Texas law is attempting to preempt Federal Law, which it seems would be a violation of the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution. Such a case it would, it seems, give the Federal Government standing. I think Pitman will stay the Texas law until the case can be heard. It is getting interesting!
Good. Let me know what you find. One of us at least needs to read Roe v Wade. The DOJ case has surely got to depend heavily on the opinion in Roe v Wade.
I assume concurrent jurisdiction is at play here ... like we discussed previously. Interesting read: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/justice-department-abortion/ The Justice Department Strikes Back Since the DOJ cannot force Texas Republicans to magically become decent people, its smart lawsuit against the state’s abortion ban is the next best thing. By Elie MystalTwitter TODAY 5:00 AM US Attorney General Merrick Garland announces that the Department of Justice is filing a lawsuit against the state of Texas over the state’s restrictive law to ban almost all abortions. He is joined by (L-R) Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Brian Netter. (Alex Wong / Getty Images) US Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice have filed a complaint against the state of Texas in an attempt to stop enforcement of the state’s anti-abortion law, which empowers bounty hunters to deprive women and pregnant people of their constitutional rights. In terms of legal authority, this was the most the DOJ could do. The Justice Department is not empowered to, say, give Texas back to Mexico or force Gregg Abbott to push a bowling ball out of his urethra against his will. It cannot stop the law; all it can do is ask courts to stop the law and support the Constitution. There isn’t much hope for legal success. The DOJ’s lawsuit was filed in the Western District of Texas. Early reports indicate that the suit will be heard by US District Court Judge Lee Yeakel. Yeakel is a George W. Bush appointee, but he does have a history of striking down some of the nuttier laws passed by the Texas legislature—and then getting overturned. After the district court, the case will be appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a court controlled by some of the most radical conservatives in the entire country. And after that, the case will be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, where conservative justices have been handpicked for their theocratic views and hostility to women. Any one of these courts can deny the DOJ’s request for relief and allow bounty hunters to continue harassing people in violation of the Constitution. Nothing can stop conservative judges from ignoring the law, but it’s worth noting that the DOJ complaint contains a series of strong legal arguments against the Texas law. Senate Bill 8 is premised on a brazen attempt by Texas to avoid judicial review. By empowering private citizens, as opposed to government officials, to enforce its restrictions, Texas claims that it, the state, cannot be held in violation of the Constitution. This is the argument that the Supreme Court accepted last week with its 5-4, one-paragraph decision to allow the Texas law to go forward—a decision the court released in the dead of night, without any of the conservatives having the guts to sign their name to their evil. The DOJ complaint attempts to intervene in this gross perversion of the rule of law—to counteract what it calls Texas’s “transparent effort to evade constitutional scrutiny”—by arguing that Texas has essentially deputized private citizens to act as law enforcement. Under relevant precedents, the state can be sued for constitutional violations when it empowers private citizens with the powers of law enforcement. If conservatives on the Supreme Court were intellectually honest, Garland has solved their legal problem by pointing to their own precedents regarding state enforcement under the guise of private action. Of course, the conservatives on the Supreme Court are not intellectually honest. They just want to control women’s bodies and have everybody else shut up about it. If they really want to pretend that bounty hunters can violate the constitutional rights of women, a complaint by the Department of Justice asking them to read their own precedents is not going to stop them. Luckily, the DOJ seems to have anticipated this and so gives the Supreme Court something else to think about. The complaint invokes the principle of “intergovernmental immunity,” which is the concept that individual states cannot prevent the federal government from enforcing federal laws. The concept of intergovernmental immunity is adjacent to the concept of qualified immunity, which asserts that a federal employee cannot be sued for doing their job. Regular readers of this column will remember that I wanted Biden to get around Texas’s bounty-hunting clause either by allowing abortion providers to benefit from qualified immunity, by federalizing them, or by hiring a number of federal workers to provide abortion services. But intergovernmental immunity accomplishes the same goal, because SB8 doesn’t authorize bounties only on abortion providers; it authorizes bounties on anyone who “aides or abets” the provision of abortion services. People have discussed the fact that SB8 could apply to an Uber driver taking a pregnant person to a clinic, or a lawyer or doctor counseling a person on their options. Well, Garland argues that there are many federal officials operating throughout Texas who could also be accused of aiding or abetting abortion services, merely by carrying out their official duties as required by law. The DOJ complaint mentions the Department of Labor, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Bureau of Prisons, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Defense as federal agencies, operating inside Texas, who have a legal duty to facilitate or provide information about abortion services. I found the Bureau of Prisons argument to be particularly compelling. If a person in federal prison gets pregnant, they have the right to have an abortion. If they elect to do so, the BOP has a legal mandate to facilitate that choice: For instance, the person must be allowed out of their cell and given access to a doctor. Under the brazen and unconstitutional Texas law, a corrections officer who allows a pregnant inmate to receive constitutionally protected medical care could be sued by a private bounty hunter for $10,000. This is a violation of the intergovernmental immunity principle. It also gives the Department of Justice standing to sue now and not later, because right now the Texas law is causing harm to identifiable government interests. In the meantime, let’s hope this isn’t the only action from the Biden administration. The president said he was ordering a “whole of government” response to Texas, and specifically called out the Department of Justice and the Department of Health & Human Services. DOJ has shot its shot; let’s see what HHS has in store. Let’s see if there is executive action forthcoming. Heck, I’d like to see the Department of Transportation providing free plane flights back to America for people in Texas seeking constitutionally protected medical care after six weeks of pregnancy. There’s a whole lot more government can do before we get to the “whole” of it. The Supreme Court has no army and no money. Ironically, Merrick Garland, a martyr to the Republican politicization of the courts, is giving it a chance to maintain the only thing it does have: legitimacy. Should the court throw that chance away, again, we should demand that the rest of the government take direct action to protect women and those who become pregnant. For their part, Garland and the DOJ have done a good job within the bounds of established law Elie Mystal TWITTER Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent—covering the courts, the criminal justice system, and politics—and the force behind the magazine’s monthly column “Objection!” He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He can be followed @ElieNYC. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/justice-department-abortion/
There is no constitutional right to marry someone of another race but the government is still not allowed to ban it... There is no constitutional right to getting a boob job but government cannot ban them (thank God!) Supreme Court found the government is restricted in its ability to ban abortions and current texas law is more restrictive than laws struck down by Roe v Wade so we will see what happens.
They are already are decent people... Your are apparently in favor of killing human life.. Which may continue to be legal but its really decent. I am sure don't find killing puppies is decent. Seriously... I understand why many are pro abortion... but its not like killing babies is a good thing.