#texas supreme court

[mysharona1987]

[thingstrumperssay]

So Texas did what they were always planning to do and made abortions even if the mother's life is at risk illegal.

A woman who's name is Kate Cox tried to fight against the supreme court because the fetus isn't viable and she will die if she doesn't get an abortion, and they told her "too bad."

They were never pro-life.

[captainxtra]

Texas is ran by ghouls.

The day Texas turns blue will be one for the history books...

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A Texas woman who had sought a legal medical exemption for an abortion has left the state after the Texas Supreme Court paused a lower court decision that would allow her to have the procedure, lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights said Monday.

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble last week had ruled that Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from Dallas, could terminate her pregnancy. According to court documents, Cox's doctors told her her baby suffered from the chromosomal disorder trisomy 18, which usually results in either stillbirth or an early death of an infant.

As of the court filing last week, Cox was 20 weeks pregnant. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the lawsuit, Cox left the state because she "couldn't wait any longer" to get the procedure.

"Her health is on the line," said Center for Reproductive Rights CEO Nancy Northup. "She's been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn't wait any longer."

In response to Gamble's decision, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned a Texas medical center that it would face legal consequences if an abortion were performed.

In an unsigned order late Friday, the Texas Supreme Court then temporarily paused Gamble's ruling.

On Monday, after Cox left the state, the state Supreme Court lifted the pause and ruled against Cox's request, dismissing it as moot.

According to court documents, Cox's doctors had told her that early screening and ultrasound tests suggested her pregnancy is "unlikely to end with a healthy baby," and due to her two prior cesarean sections, continuing the pregnancy puts her at risk of "severe complications" that threaten "her life and future fertility."

The lawsuit alleges that due to Texas' strict abortion bans, doctors have told her their "hands are tied" and she would have to wait until the fetus dies inside her or carry the pregnancy to term, when she will have to undergo a third C-section "only to watch her baby suffer until death."

The lawsuit was filed as the state Supreme Court is weighing whether the state's strict abortion ban is too restrictive for women who suffer from severe pregnancy complications. An Austin judge ruled earlier this year that women who experience extreme complications could be exempt from the ban, but the ruling is on hold while the all-Republican Supreme Court considers the state's appeal. 

In the arguments before the state Supreme Court, the state's lawyers suggested that a woman who is pregnant and receives a fatal fetal diagnosis could bring a "lawsuit in that specific circumstance." 

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Cox v. Texas is the first case since the overturning of Roe v. Wade to be filed on behalf of a pregnant person seeking emergency abortion care. Last week, a woman in Kentucky who is 8 weeks pregnant filed a lawsuit challenging the state's two abortion bans. 

[filosofablogger]

A Brief Update

Earlier today I wrote about Kate Cox and her struggle to obtain an abortion despite the fact that the fetus she carries is not viable and her very life is in danger.  I wrote that late last night, and when I woke this morning, it was to this headline in the New York Times … Texas Supreme Court Temporarily Halts Court-Approved Abortion   The court, responding to an appeal from Attorney General Ken…

[tomorrowusa]

A reminder that Republicans reserve the right to police reproductive systems.

A Texas woman who had sought a legal medical exemption for an abortion has left the state after the Texas Supreme Court paused a lower court decision that would allow her to have the procedure, lawyers for the Center for Reproductive Rights said Monday.  State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble last week had ruled that Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from Dallas, could terminate her pregnancy. According to court documents, Cox's doctors told her her baby suffered from the chromosomal disorder trisomy 18, which usually results in either stillbirth or an early death of an infant.  As of the court filing last week, Cox was 20 weeks pregnant. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the lawsuit, Cox left the state because she "couldn't wait any longer" to get the procedure. "Her health is on the line," said Center for Reproductive Rights CEO Nancy Northup. "She's been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn't wait any longer." In response to Gamble's decision, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned a Texas medical center that it would face legal consequences if an abortion were performed.  In an unsigned order late Friday, the Texas Supreme Court then temporarily paused Gamble's ruling.  On Monday, after Cox left the state, the state Supreme Court lifted the pause, dismissing it as moot, and overturned the lower court ruling that had granted Cox's request. 

Fortunately Ms. Cox had the option of traveling to another state to have the procedure. A future US Supreme Court packed with MAGA judges could further restrict abortion nationally.

ALL of the current GOP candidates for president would choose anti-abortion judges for the US Supreme Court. And a GOP Senate would confirm them. Remind anybody considering voting for an impotent third-party candidate who has no chance of winning.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune :: @Patbagley

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 11, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 12, 2023

As is sometimes the case in American politics, a bill that many people are likely not paying a great deal of attention to is likely to have enormous impact on the nation’s future. 

That $110.5 billion national security supplemental package was designed to provide additional funding for Ukraine in its war to fight off Russia’s invasion; security assistance to Israel, primarily for missile defense systems; humanitarian assistance to citizens in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine, and elsewhere; funding to replenish U.S. weapon stockpiles; assistance to regional partners in the Indo-Pacific; investments in efforts to stop illegal fentanyl from coming into the U.S. and to dismantle international drug cartels; and investment in U.S. Customs and Border Protection to enhance border security and speed up migrant processing. 

President Joe Biden asked for the supplemental funding in late October. Such a package is broadly popular among lawmakers of both parties who like that Ukraine is holding back Russian expansion that would threaten countries that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). If Russia attacks a NATO country, all NATO members, including the U.S., are required to respond. 

Since supplying Ukraine with weapons to maintain its fight essentially means sending Ukraine outdated weapons while paying U.S. workers to build new ones, creating jobs largely in Republican-dominated states, and since Ukraine is weakening Russia for about 5% of the U.S. defense budget, it would seem to be a program both parties would want to maintain. Today, even Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “If Ukraine loses, the cost to America will be far greater than the aid we have given Ukraine. The least costly way to move forward is to provide Ukraine with the weapons needed to win and end the war.”

But now that former president Trump has made immigration a leading part of his campaign and a Trump loyalist, Mike Johnson (R-LA), is House speaker, Republican extremists are demanding their own immigration policies be added to the package. 

Those demands amount to a so-called poison pill for the measure. The House Republicans' own immigration bill significantly narrows the right to apply for asylum in the U.S.—which is a right recognized in both domestic and international law—and prevents the federal government from permitting blanket asylum in emergency cases, such as for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. It ends the asylum program that permits people to enter the U.S. with a sponsor, a program that has reduced illegal entry by up to 95%. 

It requires the government to build Trump’s wall and allows the seizure of private land to do it. 

When the House passed its immigration measure in May 2023, the administration responded that it “strongly supports productive efforts to reform the Nation’s immigration system” but opposed this measure, “which makes elements of our immigration system worse.”

And yet House Republicans are so determined to force the country to accept their extreme anti-immigration policies, they are willing to kill the aid to Ukraine that even their own lawmakers want, leaving that country undersupplied as it goes into the winter. 

When he brought the supplemental bill up last week, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) promised the Republicans that he would let them make whatever immigration amendments they wanted to the bill to be voted on, if only they would let the bill get to the floor. But all Senate Republicans refused, essentially threatening to use the filibuster to keep the measure from the floor until it includes the House Republicans' demands.

This unwillingness to fund a crucial partner in its fight against Russia has resurrected concerns that the Trump-supporting MAGA Republicans are working not for the United States but for Russian president Vladimir Putin, who badly needs the U.S. to abandon Ukraine in order to help him win his war. 

Media outlets in Moscow reinforced this sense when they celebrated the Senate vote, gloating that Ukraine is now in “agony” and that it was “difficult to imagine a bigger humiliation.” One analyst said: “The downfall of Ukraine means the downfall of Biden! Two birds with one stone!” Another: “Well done, Republicans! They’re standing firm! That’s good for us.”

Today, allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán were in Washington, D.C., where they are participating in an effort to derail further military support for Ukraine (an effort that in itself suggests Putin is concerned about how the war is going). Flora Garamvolgyi and David Smith of The Guardian explained that the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, which leads Project 2025—the far-right blueprint for a MAGA administration—and which strongly opposes aid to Ukraine, is hosting a two-day event about the war and about “transatlantic culture wars.”

This conference appears explicitly to tie the themes of the far right to an attack on Ukraine aid. Orbán has dismantled democracy in his own country, charging that the equality before the law established in democracies weakens a nation both by allowing immigration and by accepting that women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people should have the same rights as heterosexual white men, principles that he maintains undermine Christianity. In Hungary, Orbán has cracked down on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s rights while gathering power into his own hands. 

In the U.S. the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and its allies—including former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson and Arizona representative Paul Gosar—openly admire Orbán’s Hungary as a model for the U.S. Indeed, some of the anti-LGBTQ+ laws Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pushed through the Florida legislature appear to have been patterned directly on Hungarian laws.

Orbán—a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, who embraces the same “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” Orbán does—is currently working to stop the European Union from funding Ukraine. Now Orbán’s allies are openly urging their right-wing counterparts in the U.S. to join him in backing Putin. A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy told Garamvolgyi and Smith: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”

Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul today noted that even the delay in funding has hurt the U.S. “Delaying a vote on aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan will do great damage to America's reputation as a reliable global leader in a very dangerous world. Delay is a gift to Putin, Xi, and the mullahs in Iran,” he wrote. “The stakes are very high.” 

Republican determination to push their own immigration plan seems in part to be an attempt to come up with an issue to compete with abortion as the central concern of the 2024 election. As soon as he took office, Biden asked for funding to increase border security and process asylum seekers, and he has repeatedly said he wants to modernize the immigration system. To pass the national security supplemental appropriation, he has emphasized that he is willing to compromise on immigration, but the Republicans are insisting instead on a policy that echoes Trump’s extreme policies.

Immigration, on which Orbán rose to power, has the potential to outweigh abortion, which is hurting Republicans quite badly.

We’ll see. The story out of Texas, where 31-year-old Kate Cox has been unable to get an abortion despite the fact that the fetus she is carrying has a fatal condition and the pregnancy is endangering her health and her ability to carry another child in the future, illuminates just how dangerous the Republicans’ abortion bans are. Under Texas’s abortion ban, doctors would not perform an abortion, so Cox went to a state court for permission to obtain one. 

The state court ruled in Cox’s favor, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton immediately  threatened any doctor who performed the abortion, and appealed to the Texas Supreme Court to block the lower court’s order, saying that allowing Cox to obtain an abortion would irreparably harm the people of Texas. All nine of the justices on the state supreme court are Republicans. 

Late Friday night the Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court’s order, pending review, and today, Cox’s lawyers said she had left the state to obtain urgently needed health care. This evening the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Cox, saying she was not entitled to a medical exception from the state’s abortion ban. 

The image of a woman forced by the state to carry a fetus with a fatal condition at the risk of her own health and future fertility until finally she has to flee her state for medical care is one that will not be erased easily.

Meanwhile, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has disappeared. His lawyer says he was told Navalny was “no longer listed” in the files of the prison where he was being held, and Navalny’s associates have not been able to contact him for six days. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[rosielindy]

Fuck you Texas AG and not so SC 🤬

[forahouseboy-blr]

It's #Thanos time...

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Since we're heading into winter...

The Supreme Court of Texas narrowly decided Friday that sovereign immunity, which largely shields government agencies from civil lawsuits, also protects the operator of the Texas electric grid.

The 5-4 opinion will likely free the nonprofit corporation from lawsuits filed by thousands of Texans for deaths, injuries and damages following the deadly 2021 winter storm, unless lawyers find another way forward.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the power supply for most of Texas, qualifies for immunity because it “provides an essential governmental service,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote in the majority opinion. State law intended for ERCOT to have the power of an “arm of the State government,” Hecht wrote. If anyone is going to hold ERCOT accountable for its actions, Hecht wrote, it should be state regulators or the Legislature, not the courts.

Freezing temperatures gripped the state during the 2021 winter storm, straining the power supply so much that ERCOT called for cutting power to millions of homes and businesses to prevent the grid’s collapse. More than 200 people died. Experts estimated afterward that financial losses totaled between $80 billion and $130 billion, including physical damage and missed economic opportunity.

Thousands of residents accused ERCOT, power companies and distribution companies of failing to prepare for the freezing weather.

Lawyers expect the high court’s decision will allow ERCOT to be dismissed from the litigation, although it does not shield other defendants.

Attorney Mia Lorick, who represents some of those plaintiffs, said she sees only a slim possibility that lawyers could keep claims against ERCOT alive by arguing that their cases have differences that somehow skirt the sovereign immunity finding.

Majed Nachawati, whose firm is representing other plaintiffs in the related cases said, “The Texas Supreme Court’s decision is disappointing to say the least. People lost their lives and the only recourse to the citizens of Texas is to be able to go through the judicial process, and the judicial system, to try to remedy or right the wrong that occurred in this case. And if you can’t count on our judiciary to protect its citizens, I think we’re in a lot of trouble.”

Justices Jeff Boyd and John Devine, along with two others, disagreed that ERCOT has sovereign immunity. Purely private entities are clearly not sovereign, and making them so undermines the public trust, they wrote. The justices argued that “no statute designates ERCOT as a part of the government” and that courts should not be barred from hearing claims against it.

The ruling sprang from two cases filed against ERCOT. San Antonio’s municipally owned utility, CPS Energy, alleged that ERCOT mishandled the soaring price of power during the 2021 winter storm. And private equity investors at Panda Power Funds alleged that 10 years earlier ERCOT issued reports that misled them about how much power the grid needed.

ERCOT spokespersons issued a statement saying that the organization was pleased with the decision. CPS Energy said in a statement that it was disappointed but thankful that four justices agreed with the utility as it sought relief for customers. The utility said the litigation still led to “critical discussions at the highest levels that are necessary to improve our power grid and energy market.”

[filosofablogger]

Pack Him Up And Put Him In Storage!

I keep trying to remind people that Donald Trump is a private citizen, no different than you or me.  He is NOT president, does NOT have any role in government … his voice should be no louder than mine or yours.  And yet … the Texas Supreme Court has bowed down and paid fealty to Donald Trump, placing his desires ahead of the best interest of the people of Texas. The case against Texas Attorney…

[tazcrosblade]

You know you are living in a dystopia when;

Your Amazon notification has top priority over humans losing rights. In America. On 4th of July Weekend. 🎉🇺🇲

[thehawkseyecn]

Texas Attorney General Hopes to Get 1 Supreme Court Ruling to Stop Whistleblower Lawsuit

Texas Attorney General Hopes to Get 1 Supreme Court Ruling to Stop Whistleblower Lawsuit

PLEASE NOTE: Nothing in this publishing or on this website should be taken as legal advice. Texas Attorney General Hopes to Get 1 Supreme Court Ruling to Stop Whistleblower Lawsuit On November 12, 2020, more than a few individuals employed, at one time, by Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, filed an employment discrimination lawsuit in Travis County District Court. The filing was assigned…