Colorado Joins Coalition Against Texas Abortion Ban

Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Wieser joined a coalition of 24 other attorney generals filing a court brief against Texas’ unconstitutional abortion ban. The coalition is in support of the U.S. Department of Justice’s challenge to the ban, and the department’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction of the law, which went into effect earlier this month.

The brief, filed earlier this week, argues that banning all pre-viability abortions within Texas’s borders the law violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedents. The brief also argues that the Texas Legislature sought a “legal loophole” around Supreme Court precedents by shifting enforcement from government officials to private citizens.

“I am committed to defending women’s reproductive rights and equality, and Texas’ new law violates longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent by denying women their constitutionally protected right to make their own healthcare decisions,” Weiser says. “I am proud to join attorneys general nationwide in defending women’s rights that were clearly established under Roe v. Wade.”

The coalition contends that the clear purpose of Senate Bill 8’s private enforcement scheme is to produce an “across-the-board ban on constitutionally protected activity.” However, that the private enforcement mechanism does not shield Texas’s unconstitutional law from judicial review.

The brief describes how the abortion ban has already begun affecting clinics in Texas as well as other states such as Colorado. The law threatens any person who “aids and abets” a person to get an abortion with a $10,000 potential liability to anyone who so much as drives a person to a clinic. The coalition of states signing onto the brief are committed to shielding their residents and clinicians from these harms when they help a patient in Texas obtain constitutionally protected care.

Finally, the brief argues that it is essential for the federal district court to keep the law from going into effect immediately because of the irreparable harm that Senate Bill 8 is inflicting on people in Texas. Forcing a patient to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, the brief argues, will lead to negative health and socioeconomic consequences, including placing people who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term at greater risk of life-threatening illnesses, injuring their mental health, and harming their ability to maintain full-time employment.