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.
"The United States has the authority and the responsibility to ensure that no state can deprive individuals of their constitutional rights to a legislative scheme specifically designed to prevent the vindication of those rights," Garland added.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The law, known as Senate Bill 8, criminalizes abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a time at which many women don't even know they're pregnant. It also deputizes and financially incentivizes private citizens to sue abortion-seeking individuals and anyone who aids and abets in the process, reports CNBC.
S.B. 8's "unprecedented" design aims to "to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible," Garland noted, and one does not need to "think long or hard to realize the damage that would be done to our society if states were allowed to implement laws that empower any private individual to infringe on another's constitutionally protected rights in this way."
Watch more of Garland's remarks below:
-
How will China’s $1 trillion trade surplus change the world economy?Today’s Big Question Europe may impose its own tariffs
-
‘Autarky and nostalgia aren’t cure-alls’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Japan’s Princess Aiko is a national star. Her fans want even more.IN THE SPOTLIGHT Fresh off her first solo state visit to Laos, Princess Aiko has become the face of a Japanese royal family facing 21st-century obsolescence
-
Judge orders release of Ghislaine Maxwell recordsSpeed Read The grand jury records from the 2019 prosecution of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will be made public
-
Miami elects first Democratic mayor in 28 yearsSpeed Read Eileen Higgins, Miami’s first woman mayor, focused on affordability and Trump’s immigration crackdown in her campaign
-
Ex-FBI agents sue Patel over protest firingspeed read The former FBI agents were fired for kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest for ‘apolitical tactical reasons’
-
Trump unveils $12B bailout for tariff-hit farmersSpeed Read The president continues to insist that his tariff policy is working
-
Trump’s Comey case dealt new setbackspeed read A federal judge ruled that key evidence could not be used in an effort to reindict former FBI Director James Comey
-
Moscow cheers Trump’s new ‘America First’ strategyspeed read The president’s national security strategy seeks ‘strategic stability’ with Russia
-
Trump tightens restrictions for work visasSpeed Read The length of work permits for asylum seekers and refugees has been shortened from five years to 18 months
-
Supreme Court revives Texas GOP gerrymanderSpeed Read Texas Republicans can use the congressional map they approved in August at President Donald Trump’s behest
