{"id":125845,"date":"2026-01-16T15:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/125845\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T15:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:54:07","slug":"significant-texas-abortion-ban-might-be-facing-a-major-loss-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/125845\/","title":{"rendered":"Significant Texas abortion ban might be facing a major loss in court."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to forget that Texas\u2019 bounty bill, S.B. 8<\/a>, was once at the epicenter of the nation\u2019s abortion politics. In 2021, Texas passed the law, which allows literally anyone to sue providers and those who aid them any time an abortion is performed after six weeks of pregnancy. The law created a blueprint for other conservative states<\/a> and was upheld by the Supreme Court later that year<\/a>\u2014prior to the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. It also had major impacts: leading clinics to stop offering procedures after six weeks<\/a> and eventually producing an increase in both births among teenagers<\/a> and infant mortality<\/a> across the state. But now, S.B. 8 seems quaint, a relic of 2021\u2014just like reporters discussing the \u201cpost-Trump era<\/a>\u201d\u00a0or Ben Affleck and J.Lo giving it another try<\/a>. Texas now enforces a law that bans abortion from fertilization and another, passed just this year, that authorizes suits against anyone who mails, provides, manufactures, or distributes abortion pills.<\/a> No one seems to need S.B. 8 when more powerful criminal laws are on offer.<\/p>\n

But bounty bills are now at the center of a major conflict about whether ban states can censor speech, advocacy, and donations related to abortion. S.B. 8 certainly has ambitions to do just that\u2014its coverage of aiding or abetting explicitly covers \u201cpaying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion<\/a>,\u201d but it doesn\u2019t stop there. Conservative attorneys general are suing Planned Parenthood for hundreds of millions of dollars for statements comparing the safety record of the abortion pill mifepristone to Tylenol<\/a> despite the drug\u2019s safety record. North Dakota has its own suit against Mayday Health, a group that provides information about reproductive alternatives, for advertising that people who didn\u2019t want to be pregnant could visit the group\u2019s website.<\/a> The S.B. 8 suits won\u2019t just show whether abortion-rights supporters have found a chink in the law\u2019s armor. The litigation will also shape a brewing war about the censorship of abortion-related speech.<\/p>\n

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\n Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern
\n The Supreme Court \u201cRule for the Ages\u201d That Enabled Renee Good\u2019s Killing
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The latest fight began in 2022, when two Texas advocacy groups began looking for ways to protect their work helping people access abortion by traveling out of state<\/a>. Major anti-abortion organizations and individual plaintiffs were already targeting these abortion funds under S.B. 8, and so the funds responded with a barrage of lawsuits in both state and federal court, arguing that S.B. 8 violated the First Amendment by hamstringing how the plaintiffs talked to clients and advocated for reproductive rights.<\/p>\n

Then there is money, the lifeblood of abortion funds. The Supreme Court has protected some forms of election spending under the First Amendment<\/a>, and the abortion funds argue that the same doctrine protects them too. The lawsuits raise other arguments: that the statute is so ambiguous that no one would know what they\u2019re allowed to do, and that the law violates principles of equal protection under the law by creating a special set of procedural rules that apply only to people who use it to sue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

District courts in Chicago<\/a> and Washington, D.C<\/a>., dismissed the federal suits on procedural grounds, but it still seems like abortion opponents in Texas are worried about the constitutional questions. That\u2019s why they\u2019ve gone on the offensive. In an ironic twist, in one prominent case now before the Texas Supreme Court, they\u2019re arguing that constitutional challenges to S.B. 8 itself\u00a0undermine protected speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the issue in Weldon v. Lilith Fund. Sadie Weldon, a private citizen, sought to depose the Lilith Fund\u2019s deputy director using a special Texas mechanism called a 202 petition that allows people to investigate a potential claim before filing suit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court Just Decided a Major Issue in Cases Like Renee Good\u2019s Shooting\u2014and Not How You Might Expect
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Key to the Birthright Citizenship Case Could Be These Long-Forgotten Supreme Court Precedents
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Weldon hardly came up with the idea on her own: Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of S.B. 8, had filed at least nine such petitions by the spring of 2024, including against people who traveled out of state for abortion.<\/a> The Lilith Fund was ready to go, using Weldon\u2019s petition as an opening for another constitutional challenge to S.B. 8.<\/a> Mitchell then asked the court to dismiss the Lilith Fund\u2019s countersuit, invoking what is called an anti-SLAPP law<\/a>. These laws, which stand for anti\u2013strategic lawsuit against public participation law, or SLAPP, are meant to stop frivolous lawsuits by powerful companies and individuals looking to silence their critics and suppress protected speech<\/a>. Texas\u2019 law applies to suits on speech about \u201cmatters of public concern<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weldon and some other anti-abortion plaintiffs lost on those claims in lower courts, which concluded that the Lilith Fund was trying to make sure that the state was not \u201cenforcing an unconstitutional statute,\u201d not trying to silence anyone.<\/a> Now Weldon \u2018s case is before the Texas Supreme Court, which heard oral argument this week.<\/p>\n

Weldon\u2019s case might not be a blockbuster\u2014there\u2019s a chance that it\u2019s moot because she\u2019s given up on her 202 petition\u2014but it\u2019s a reminder that S.B. 8 is back. The law might have killed abortion rights in Texas even before the demise of Roe, but now, it may play a surprising role in establishing that there are limits on silencing speech about abortion, even in the places where it\u2019s a crime.<\/p>\n

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