The recently passed Texas abortion law promotes vigilante action, turning citizens into bounty hunters to carry out public policy.
This law replaces government involvement, allowing large organizations like Texas Right to Live to police other citizens. If successful, similar laws could be passed to enforce legislated social policies. There is no justice in this law, a law that allows one person to sue another without having been harmed nor have any relationship to the person being sued. It does this in such a way that the person being sued may be sued multiple times for a single event until they lose.
If the person being sued wins, they cannot be reimbursed for their legal fees, and they may have to travel anywhere in the state to have their day in court for each suit. The person who sues and wins receives $10,000 in damages and attorney’s fees.
This law makes a mockery of justice. Anyone may be sued based on hearsay. This totalitarian law asks us to report our neighbor’s suspected act. The secret operation of a large nonprofit corporation can orchestrate the filing of multiple suits to enforce the law’s social control. Since court filings are public record, there is no privacy for the person being sued nor, in this law, the person who may have had an abortion.
Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor stated that this law’s cash reward effectively “deputized the State’s citizens as bounty hunters.” Let your legislators know vigilante laws are not acceptable.
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