Attorney General Merrick Garland slams Texas' abortion ban as 'legislative scheme' that's 'clearly unconstitutional'

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas over its new six-week abortion ban, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday. The Texas law went into effect on Sept. 1 after the U.S. Supreme Court declined an emergency request to block it.

Garland called the ban "clearly unconstitutional under longstanding Supreme Court precedent," The Washington Post reports, and said it is invalid under the Supremacy Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, is pre-empted by federal law, and violates the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity. The lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare the ban "invalid, null, and void," per its text, and to "enjoin the state and private parties from enforcing it," per Reuters' Brad Heath.

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.