Topline
The first private citizen-led lawsuits seeking to enforce Texas’ near-total ban on abortion were filed in state court Monday—offering the first test of the law’s controversial provision that encourages private lawsuits—as a former lawyer and convicted felon in Arkansas and “pro-choice plaintiff” in Illinois sued a Texas doctor who admitted in a Washington Post op-ed he had violated the law.
Key Facts
Plaintiff Oscar Stilley sued Dr. Alan Braid under Texas’ Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), which empowers private citizens to enforce its near-total ban on abortion through lawsuits brought against anyone that “aids and abets” an abortion.
Braid said in a Post op-ed published Saturday he had performed an abortion for a woman whose pregnancy was “beyond the legal limit” under SB 8, writing he violated the law both to help the woman and to “make sure that Texas didn’t get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested.”
Stilley, who sued Braid in Bexar County District Court for violating SB 8, describes himself in the lawsuit as “a disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer” still residing in Arkansas, who is now in home confinement serving a 15-year sentence after being convicted of tax fraud and conspiracy.
Stilley told the Post in an interview he had brought the litigation in order to test whether SB 8 is constitutional, as well as for the $10,000 in damages the law empowers any citizen to collect if their legal challenge is successful—though Stilley’s lawsuit asks for a higher sum of $100,000.
A second lawsuit was filed against Braid in Bexar County by Felipe N. Gomez, who did not seek any monetary damages and directly challenged the Texas law, alleging SB 8 “is illegal as written and as applied here until Roe v Wade is reversed or modified.”
Crucial Quote
“If the state of Texas decided it’s going to give a $10,000 bounty, why shouldn’t I get that 10,000 bounty?” Stilley told the Post.
Chief Critic
“S.B. 8 says that ‘any person’ can sue over a violation, and we are starting to see that happen, including by out-of-state claimants,” Center for Reproductive Rights senior counsel Marc Hearon, whose organization represents Baird’s clinics, said in a statement Monday. In his Post op-ed, Baird wrote he was aware he was “taking a personal risk” by violating SB 8 and openly admitting he did so, but “it’s something I believe in strongly.” “I have spent the past 50 years treating and helping patients,” Baird wrote. “I can’t just sit back and watch us return to 1972.” The doctor declined to comment to the Post on Stilley’s lawsuit.
Tangent
Texas Right to Life, the anti-abortion group that helped draft the Texas law and has been expected to be the primary litigant against abortion advocates in the state, sharply criticized the two lawsuits filed Monday in a statement. “Neither of these lawsuits are valid attempts to save innocent human lives,” the organization said, decrying them as “self-serving legal stunts.” “We believe Braid published his op-ed intending to attract imprudent lawsuits, but none came from the Pro-Life movement. “
Key Background
SB 8 bans all surgical abortions after approximately six weeks into a pregnancy—before most people know they’re pregnant—affecting approximately 85% of abortions in the state. The law’s enforcement mechanism of private lawsuits rather than by government officials was designed to make the law harder to strike down in court, something that has already proven effective as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 not to strike the law down as abortion providers had asked. Though Stilley and Gomez’s lawsuits are the first private citizen-led lawsuits to be brought under SB 8’s provisions, the law has already been the target of multiple lawsuits aiming to strike it down entirely, including the one brought by abortion providers and a separate lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice. Multiple plaintiffs including Planned Parenthood have also successfully gotten court orders that block specific defendants from suing them under the law. John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, the anti-abortion group that helped draft SB 8, previously told Forbes he believed the private citizen-led lawsuits would likely be the best case for testing the law’s constitutionality, however. Whether or not the law will hold up in court will also likely have national repercussions, as other GOP state lawmakers have signaled their intention to try and pass legislation that mimics the Texas ban.
Further Reading
Texas doctor who violated state’s abortion ban is sued, launching first test of constitutionality (Washington Post)
Opinion: Why I violated Texas’s extreme abortion ban (Washington Post)
