In Texas Jim Crow Tactics Reborn, Deputizing Citizens To Enforce Abortion Law, Legally Suspect Provisions
Stefanie Lindquist, Arizona State University
The new Texas law that bans most abortions uses a method employed by Texas and other states to enforce racist Jim Crow laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to disenfranchise African Americans.
Rather than giving state officials, such as the police, the power to enforce the law, the Texas law instead allows enforcement by “any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state.” This enforcement mechanism relies solely on citizens, rather than on government officials, to enforce the law.
This approach to enforcement is a legal end-run that privatizes a state’s enforcement of the law. By using this method of enforcement, state officials are shielded from being sued for violating the Constit...