Texas as a state didn’t ban abortions. It simply enlisted the citizens of Texas in preventing abortions. Abortion is already against the law in Texas as soon as doctors detect a fetal heartbeat – about six weeks, or before most women know they’re pregnant. The law is stayed by the courts. So, Texas allowed any citizen to sue anyone providing abortions or aiding someone, encouraging someone to get an abortion after a heartbeat because abortion is against state law. This, of course, leaves the clinics no obvious person to sue because they will so obviously lose under this particular law. Because Texas isn’t necessarily the actual party against the abortion itself (only the person dragging the clinic into court), it’s designed to get around court injunctions.

We all know what’s really happening here. What’s really happening is that Texas is the first state to introduce Sharia law, Fundamentalist Christian Sharia law, allowing anyone who they believe to be violating the law to drag the clinic into court and win a lawsuit.

Justice Sotomayor wasn’t fooled (And neither were the other two liberal justices, nor was C.J. Roberts, who also dissented). She wrote one of the most scathing dissents we’ve ever read. When reading, understand that the court generally uses the driest language possible. They don’t call each other fcking assh*les, so this is scathing, in its own context:

“Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of Justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand. Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the Court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the State’s own invention.”

The majority is – after the fact – retreating to justify what it did, “procedural complexities.” The procedure isn’t the problem, it’s the result.

“In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the State’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures. Taken together, the Act is a breathtaking act of defiance—of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.”

And, boom:

“This is untenable. It cannot be the case that a State can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry. … [The] Court has rewarded the State’s effort to delay federal review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of the Court’s precedents, through procedural entanglements of the State’s own creation. The Court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligations to protect not only the rights of women, but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.”

Rewarded Texas’s bold move. “CONTENT” to ignore its obligation and precedent? Justice Sotomayor is furious and quickly becoming Ruth Bader-Ginsberg’s heir as the Court’s liberal conscience. Remember, too – Chief Justice Roberts also dissented. Roe seems destined to die, but the result might push Roberts further and further left. Not that it’s a worthy trade, just something to note.

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