While some of the conservative justices admitted that the plaintiffs Monday had strong cases against the six-week Texas abortion ban, they wrung their hands about how to remedy it.
“I think it’s a forceful argument,” Justice Samuel Alito said after Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar presented the ways that the Texas ban had been written to thwart legal challenges. “But I think we have to be concerned about the implications of the mechanisms that you propose for providing some kind of relief.”
During Monday’s two-and-a-half hour marathon of back-to-back oral arguments in two lawsuits against the ban, the conservative justices took issue with nearly every tactic the plaintiffs came up with to block the law, even as they expressed concern about the law itself.
The plaintiffs’ task was significantly complicated by the fact that the law was purposefully written to skirt federal judicial review. It deputizes individuals, tempted by a bounty of at least $10,000, to carry it out — depriving plaintiffs of an obvious state official to name on the suit and enjoin from enforcing it.
In both cases, one brought by abortion providers and one by the Department of Justice, the plaintiffs pointed to the Texas court system as comprised of state actors being “weaponized” to enforce the law. By enjoining the country clerks from docketing S.B. 8 lawsuits and state judges from hearing them, the plaintiffs argued, the law would be stymied without having to expose defendants to potentially ruinous fines.
Justice Clarence Thomas, finding his voice after years of silence from the bench, asked Marc Hearron, lawyer for the abortion providers, how he’d get around precedent from another case to enjoin the state judges.
Chief Justice John Roberts balked at the novelty of the remedy.
“It’s hardly traditional to get injunctions against judges, injunctions against clerks, injunctions against everybody, right? That’s part of the relief you seek, isn’t it?” he asked Prelogar. “Anybody can bring one of these suits, so you’re seeking an injunction against the world, right?”
Alito and Justice Neil Gorsuch both torqued up the emotion with their lines of questioning, showing their sympathies to be aligned with the judges and clerks who may be blocked from moving forward lawsuits against those who helped a woman get an illegal abortion.
“A woman shows up at the clerk’s office and says, I want to file a pro se complaint against the doctor who performed my abortion because it caused me physical and/or emotional harm and I want to sue under S.B. 8 because I want actual damages, but I also want the $10,000 in liquidated damages,” Alito hypothezied, asking if even in that case, a clerk should still refuse to docket the lawsuit.
Hearron said yes.
Gorsuch spun up his own hypothetical where S.B. 8 is somehow consistent with the precedent of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood that guarantees a pre-viability abortion, and imagines a massive burden on the shoulders of the poor county clerk.
“Should they file those lawsuits?” he asked. “Should they try and determine which side of the line they fall on? I mean, post-viability, not for medical reasons, you know, that would meet a Roe and Casey test? Are they supposed to apply Roe and Casey themselves?”
Gorsuch, champion of the clerks, also repeatedly brought up a hypothetical where one could be found in criminal contempt for improperly docketing S.B. 8 lawsuits.
Having questioned the legitimacy of suing clerks and judges, Gorsuch eagerly expanded on Roberts’ “can you sue the world” quip to expand his hypothetical to celestial heights.
“General, are you aware of a precedent that permits an injunction against all persons in the country or the world, the cosmos, who bring suit?” Gorsuch asked Prelogar incredulously.
“In the history of the United States, you can’t identify one for us, right?” he pushed on.
“In the history of the United States, no state has done what Texas has done here,” Prelogar responded.
Again this maneuver by Texas will ripple out to other states, and beyond abortion limitations.
So you 6 conservative justices what happens to a woman’s rights once the only places in the US of A is CA or NY where they can get an abortion after 6 weeks? Will there be some sort medical ship anchored out in the gulf? Or some set up of a abandoned oil platform? How will they handle women going across the border to Mexico? Will border patrol get sued because they allowed a woman to cross to get an abortion?
Gorsuch, champion of the clerks
“I’m Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today!”
To which Prelogar responded, in good voice:
Injunction junction, what’s your function? 
FFS! The law itself and the 6-week abortion ban are clearly in violation of the precedents of Roe and Casey. A six-week abortion ban is clearly an undue burden under the standard of Casey and, as such, the entire Texas law should be declared unconstitutional. The enforcement mechanism is SB 8 is just a ruse. If the so-called conservative justices can’t agree on those simple facts, it is clear that what they are looking for is a shadow ban of Roe and Casey. I.e., the conservative justices want to o/t Roe v. Wade without having to actually declare that they are overturning Roe v. Wade. They know that actually overturning Roe will cause massive blowback and, at the same time, deprive christofascists of their most powerful recruiting/money raising tool. Fucking cowards!