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:
-
AI agents: When bots browse the webfeature Letting robots do the shopping
-
Will Chuck Schumer keep his job?Today's Big Question Democrats are discontented and pointing a finger at the Senate leader
-
Dick Cheney: the vice president who led the War on Terrorfeature Cheney died this month at the age of 84
-
Trump says he will sell F-35 jets to Saudi ArabiaSpeed Read The president plans to make several deals with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week
-
Judge blasts ‘profound’ errors in Comey caseSpeed Read ‘Government misconduct’ may necessitate dismissing the charges against the former FBI director altogether
-
Ecuador rejects push to allow US military basesSpeed Read Voters rejected a repeal of a constitutional ban on US and other foreign military bases in the country
-
Trump pivots on Epstein vote amid GOP defectionsSpeed Read The president said House Republicans should vote on a forced release of the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files
-
Trump DOJ sues to block California redistrictingSpeed Read California’s new congressional map was drawn by Democrats to flip Republican-held House seats
-
GOP retreats from shutdown deal payout provisionSpeed Read Senators are distancing themselves from a controversial provision in the new government funding package
-
Catholic bishops rebuke Trump on immigrationSpeed Read ‘We feel compelled’ to ‘raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity,’ the bishops said
-
House releases Epstein emails referencing TrumpSpeed Read The emails suggest Trump knew more about Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage women than he has claimed
