SB 8 is an unprecedented law that creates a 'bounty' system allowing anyone involved in the abortion process to be sued, even for an incentive.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court dealt a final blow to a federal challenge to the controversial Texas abortion law SB 8. The crux of this decision was determining who is actually enforcing the rule: the government or civilians.
The law's unique mechanism works by making a type of"bounty" system. The law allows citizens to sue anyone involved in performing or aiding an abortion and the law even gives them a financial incentive. "Now what this means more broadly for law are a number of things,” one of which is that it means that a state can trump federal law, which is antithetical to everything that we've known in constitutional law and federalism, which is that when the federal government has spoken either through Congress or through federal courts and the Supreme Court, that that becomes the law of the land," Goodwin said.
"Fugitive slave laws provided for this kind of citizen vigilantism, so if one thinks about why fugitive slave laws become important to this narrative, it has a lot to do with the failures of the Supreme Court and the ways in which states sought to strategize against the promise of equality found in the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment," Goodwin said.
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