Justice Dept. Sues Texas Over State’s New Abortion Law
This Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Texas over its new abortion law, saying the state’s legislature enacted the statute “in open defiance of the Constitution.”
As we previously reported, Texas recently approved the new state law that bans abortions after about six weeks, before most people realize they are pregnant, halting the procedure in the country’s second-largest state.
“The act is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding Supreme Court precedent,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland during a press conference Thursday afternoon. “Those precedents hold, in the words of Planned Parenthood v. Casey that ‘regardless of whether exceptions are made for particular circumstances, a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability,’” NPR quotes. The Justice Department is now seeking a permanent injunction against the law.
This kind of scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States is one that all Americans, whatever their politics or party, should fear,” Garland said Thursday. “If it prevails, it may become a model for action in other areas, by other states and with respect to other constitutional rights and judicial precedents.”
He added,
“Nor need one 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,” the U.S. attorney general said, CNBC quotes.
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