Merrick Garland is taking serious legal action against Texas abortion law
When Texas enacted a wildly unconstitutional and depravedly sexist law banning abortion after six weeks and sending bounty hunters after everyone involved, critics asked why Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t step up to the nearest podium and set his hair on fire. Now we’re getting the answer: nothing works that way.
As United States Attorney General, Merrick Garland isn’t our nation’s chief publicist or cheerleader. He’s our nation’s chief lawyer – and lawyers take care of business with paperwork and in court. Accordingly, the Financial Times and others are reporting that Garland is filing suit against Texas over the law. This is how the ball gets rolling.
Garland and his DOJ will poke as many legal holes in the Texas abortion law as possible, in the hope of getting the courts to strike down part or all of it, or to issue an injunction. That way, by the time the Texas law gets to the Supreme Court, it’ll be in tatters, and even these right wing judges may have a hard time figuring out a legal path for saving the law.
There’s no guarantee that such a strategy will work, of course. But it’s the legal strategy to try. It’s literally Merrick Garland’s job – and he’s doing it. Winning in the court of public, carrying out targeted boycotts, and helping individual women work around this illegal law is our job as activists. Convincing the courts to rip away at the law is the job of our lawyer Garland.
