Texas’s bounty-hunting abortion law could remain on the books for a long time

WHEN THE Texas legislature passed a law trying to ban abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, many Supreme Court-watchers expected it to be put on hold because it contradicted a right to abortion, enshrined in , that the court has recognised for nearly 50 years. Instead the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, declined to do this on procedural grounds. The law has gone into effect which is, most obviously, bad for women in Texas. But it is also bad for the court itself and for the rule of law because, through their inaction, the justices in the majority have permitted America’s legal system to be hacked.The Texas law is ingeniously awful. Its novel enforcement mechanism was designed by a former clerk to the late Antonin Scalia, a justice who died in 2016, to evade scrutiny by the court. Challenges to a state law’s constitutionality usually require someone to bring a case against the state officials. The Texas law makes that tricky, by explicitly preventing public officials in Texas from enforcing it. Instead, anyone based anywhere in the country can sue a Texan who assists in the provision of an abortion after about six weeks, from the taxi driver or relative who drove a woman to a clinic to the receptionists or nurses working there. As an encouragement to do so, successful plaintiffs will have their legal costs paid and receive a $10,000 reward, levied as a fine against the target of the lawsuit. Thus abortion is banned without a single Texas Ranger getting involved.