Department Of Justice Sues Texas Over Its Vigilante Abortion Bounty Hunter Law

CNN reports, Justice Department sues Texas over six-week abortion ban:

The Biden Justice Department sued the state of Texas on Thursday over its new six-week abortion ban, saying the state law is unconstitutional.

Announcing the lawsuit at a news conference in Washington, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Texas law’s “unprecedented” design seeks “to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible.”

“The act is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding Supreme Court precedent” Garland said.

The Texas law was designed specifically with the goal of making it more difficult for clinics to obtain federal court orders blocking enforcement of the law. Instead of creating criminal penalties for abortions conducted after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the Texas Legislature has tasked private citizens with enforcing the law by bringing private litigation against clinics — and anyone else who assists a woman in obtaining an abortion after six weeks.

Since the law went into effect, clinics across Texas have stopped offering abortions after six weeks, or have shuttered altogether.

“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, warning that Texas’ approach could become a model for other states as well as other kinds of attack on other constitutional rights.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Austin, alleged that the Texas law is unconstitutional because it conflicts with “the statutory and constitutional responsibilities of the federal government.”

“The United States has the authority and responsibility to ensure that Texas cannot evade its obligations under the Constitution and deprive individuals of their constitutional rights by adopting a statutory scheme designed specifically to evade traditional mechanisms of federal judicial review,” the lawsuit states.

The Justice Department is seeking a declaratory judgment declaring the Texas abortion ban invalid, as well as a “preliminary and permanent injunction against the State of Texas — including all of its officers, employees, and agents, including private parties” who would enforce the abortion ban.

[D]ozens of lawyers spent the past week working on the best way to try to challenge the law directly. They determined using the federal programs that would be disrupted by the ban presented the best way to establish standing and to try to preempt the law.

Thursday, Garland said the Texas law infringed upon the activities of Labor Department, Defense Department and other federal agencies. Specifically, DOJ said in the lawsuit, the Texas law “exposes federal personnel and grantees to liability for carrying out their federal obligations to provide access to abortion-related services to persons” in the federal government’s care.

The DOJ also argued in the filing that the government has the right to bring the suit against the state because the the US may “vindicate its interest” when a state law “flagrantly infringes the constitutional rights of the public at large.”

The “United States therefore may sue a State to vindicate the rights of individuals when a state infringes on rights protected by the Constitution.” It also cited the so-called “Take Care” Clause of the Constitution, which says that the President has the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Reproductive rights group that have already brought their own federal court challenge to the Texas law, only to see that lawsuit stalled by the procedural difficulties the ban presents, cheered the Biden administration’s actions. Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, called the new lawsuit, “welcome news,” and Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, deemed the DOJ’s involvement a “gamechanger.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office pledged to defend the law and called the DOJ lawsuit a distraction for the White House.

“The most precious freedom is life itself [says the governor responsible for the deaths of thousands of Texans]. Texas passed a law that ensures that the life of every child with a heartbeat will be spared from the ravages of abortion,” Abbott press secretary Renae Eze said in a statement. “Unfortunately, President Biden and his administration are more interested in changing the national narrative from their disastrous Afghanistan evacuation and reckless open border policies instead of protecting the innocent unborn.”

Spoken like a true demagogue.

Garland on Monday had also pledged to protect abortion clinics in Texas by enforcing a federal law that prohibits making threats against patients seeking reproductive health services and obstructing clinic entrances.

---

Spare me Greg Abbott’s “pro life” Bullshit. This Trump death cult governor is responsible for one of the worst examples of criminal negligence in the county. He is responsible for 59,138 Covid-19 deaths (as of today). And this is on top his criminal negligence last winter during the Texas deep freeze. (Texas Winter Storm Death Toll Goes Up To 210).

Gov. Abbott is literally trying to kill Texas children.

The Texas Tribune reports, At least 45 districts shut down in-person classes due to COVID-19 cases, affecting more than 40,000 students:

At least 45 small school districts across Texas have been forced to temporarily stop offering in-person classes as a result of COVID-19 cases in the first few weeks of the new school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.

The shutdowns, which affected about 42,000 students as of Thursday, come as cases caused by the highly contagious delta variant have plagued administrators who hoped for a normal return to the school year.

Caseloads have left districts scrambling when many have said they have fewer tools at their disposal to combat the spread of the virus and have had to come up with their own strategies that can differ from district to district. Administrators are tasked with protecting students’ and staff members’ health, providing a quality education and staying open enough days to avoid tacking on extra days at the end of the school year.

“By far this is worse in terms of planning than last year,” said Tim Savoy, spokesperson for Hays Consolidated Independent School District, which closed some classrooms. “There’s no question about it. Last year we had a lot of tools at our disposal: We could require masks, and we could provide a virtual option that was funded. … [Then], the delta variant really kind of appeared and just exploded on us.”

[F]rom Aug. 23-29, there were 27,353 new positive COVID-19 cases among students in Texas public schools, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, making it the biggest one-week increase in the entire pandemic. The state reports 51,904 cases among students and 13,026 among staff since the school year began. That’s about 1% of the 5.3 million students enrolled in the state as of January.

Children’s hospitals, which have been inundated with COVID-19 patients at levels never seen before during the pandemic, have also seen an uptick in patients as the school year is underway, said Dr. Corwin Warmink, medical director of emergency services for Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth.

“Every year when school starts, we expect a bump in volume [in our emergency room] — we planned for it, we scheduled for it,” Warmink said at a news conference Wednesday. “In the regular year we’ll see about 300 kids a day during this time. On Monday, we saw 601, an all-time record. … At 600, we’re physically unable to care for kids in a timely fashion.”

[S]enate Bill 15, which is headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, would fund virtual learning until September 2023 and give school districts the option to set up their own virtual programs. However, the legislation comes with a slew of caveats which could exclude many students of color.

Another tool districts relied on last year — the ability to require students to wear masks — is caught in back-and-forth legal battles after Abbott issued an order banning mask mandates in schools.

Houston Public Media reports, Doctors Say Texas Leaders Failed To Stop COVID-19 From Spreading:

Texas schools have amassed more than 50,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in students in just a couple of weeks. More than a dozen school districts have closed temporarily as a result of the disease, and Texas is a leader in child deaths from COVID-19 with 59 as of Sept. 3.

But state leaders have spent weeks of the surge pushing through controversial bills around abortion, voting restrictions and bail reform while Gov. Abbott has been fighting local governments over their efforts to stem the spread of the disease.

Hospitals across the state are running low on pediatric intensive care unit beds. Texas’ Department of State Health Services says only 81 of them remain — and just a couple hundred more regular ICU beds are available in the state of 29 million people.

“Governor Abbott has failed us. A republican state legislature has failed us,” said Dr. David Portugal a cardiologist in Sugarland, Texas. “These leaders should be held accountable and be asked to explain how they can justify taking actions that are killing their fellow Texans.”

Portugal and other Texas members of the advocacy group the Committee to Protect Health Care called on the governor to rescind his executive order barring local governments from mandating masks in schools. They are just a few of the many healthcare workers and local governments frustrated by the state’s lack of action on preventing the spread of COVID.

State officials recently admitted the bans were unenforceable by them, leaving it to local district attorneys. But the continued litigation and threats to school districts has left confusion and patchwork of policies that many doctors see as exacerbating the COVID surge.

“Hospital staff and resources are stretched to the breaking point,” said Dr. Elena Jimenez-Gutierrez, an internal medicine physician in San Antonio.

The surge has led to canceled surgeries, overwhelmed staff and preventable hospitalizations and deaths.

“Doctors and other health care workers see every day how too many Texans are needlessly getting sick, including many children when we know this disease can be prevented,” she said.

Abbott promotes vaccination as the real prevention. He got vaccinated on TV. But he draws the line on mandates — vaccines or masks — which are very unpopular with conservative primary voters as he faces two far-right challengers early next year.

“We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health and we will do so without treading on Texans personal freedoms,” said Abbott in an April tweet where he also announced he would ban private companies from asking for proof of vaccination.

He reissued the order last month.

[F]ive mortuary trailers were dispatched to San Antonio to assist hospitals across the state that had run out of room. San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the forethought on deaths should have been used to stem the spread.

This is what makes Greg Abbott criminally negligent.

“The fact is, the state is planning that more people are going to die of COVID. So much so that they anticipate local hospitals across the state are not going to be able to handle the amount of death they are going to see,” said Nirenberg.

Eight counties across the state are using refrigerated trucks to store the bodies of the dead. Bell County which includes Temple, Texas, has requested a second FEMA trailer with an extra storage capacity of 50 bodies. Several smaller trailers have been donated by the state funeral directors association.

As more schools see spikes in COVID transmissions, more teachers and students will become infected and could die.

Doctors and many local leaders wish the state would do more to prevent that.