We have our SB8 test case (Udpated)

We have our SB8 test case(s). On Saturday, Texas doctor Alan Braid wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post announcing/confessing to performing a first-trimester-post-heartbeat abortion. On Monday, Oscar Stilley filed suit in state court in Bexar County. Stilley is a disbarred lawyer and tax protester, under home confinement serving a 15-year sentence on tax charges. Expect to read a lot more about his brand of insanity, some of which appears in the complaint--he alleges that he called Braid and asked him to "repent of his ideology as well as his deeds" and filed suit only when "such respectful efforts" failed to secure an agreement.

Update: A second suit was filed by a "pro choice plaintiff" from Illinois, also in Bexar County. Further Update: This plaintiff also is a lawyer who has encountered some disciplinary problems.

I agree with the comment someone made on the ConLawProf listserv: This is the plaintiff Texas deserves for enacting this nonsense. I would be curious about what the anti-choice community thinks of this suit. This is not who they want as the face of the movement nor is he likely to offer the best defense of the law. In the same way the reproductive-rights community wants an appealing person to violate the law, those seeking to defend the law want an appealing plaintiff. I imagine activists were happy with the current state of affairs--no lawsuits, no abortions in the state, running out the clock until (they hope) a favorable decision in Dobbs. (Further Update: The head of Texas right to life is not happy, calling the suits "self-serving legal stunts, abusing the cause of action created in the Texas Heartbeat Act for their own purposes." This is a long way of saying "Fuck, we have been hoisted on our own petards.")

Braid's first move in state court should be a motion to dismiss on constitutional grounds and a request for expedited briefing. The more interesting question is whether Braid brings a § 1983 action against Stilley on a public-function theory (in enforcing state law under an exclusive delegation, Stilley is performing a traditional-and-exclusive public function) and seeks to enjoin him from pursuing the state-court litigation. This might be the path into federal court. We are off and running.

The second, "pro choice plaintiff" complaint is its own form of nonsense that undermines its own strategy. One paragraph moves the court to declare the act unconstitutional and another alleges that Braid did not violate Roe (whatever that means) and that the act is unlawful. This is not the way to do this. There is room for what Rocky labels "arranged" litigation, in which a plaintiff who supports reproductive freedom brings the lawsuit and is willing to lose, giving the doctor the opportunity to challenge SB8's constitutional validity, including on appeal. The statute allows "any person" to sue, so there is no basis for the court to look for either injury or adverseness; a person can say he is suing because he needs the money. But the sympathetic plaintiff must act like a plaintiff by alleging that the defendant violated the law; it is on the defendant to make the arguments against the law. But given the pervasive misunderstanding of procedure in this mess, it should not be surprising that the first moves come from people who cannot get the procedure right.