Dorf on limiting bounty hunters

In (properly, IMHO) rejecting what he called the courts-and-clerks theory in WWH, Justice Gorsuch argued that this litigation theory lacks a limiting principle--every defamation defendant with a First Amendment defense would sue the clerk to stop the filing of the threatened lawsuit. Michael Dorf offers a limiting principle; Rick responded on Twitter to question the idea that the federal Constitution prohibits states from selectively weakening their standing rules; pointed to my post arguing that the Florida law allowing parents to sue schools for teaching that slavery and Jim Crow were bad things is not like SB8; and urged me to respond to Mike's column. So here goes.

I think this is the money graf from Mike's column:

Likewise, if a state so loosens its standing rules in the way that Texas did for SB8, and if it does so for the obvious purpose of insulating from federal judicial review a law that chills the exercise of a constitutional right, then it is appropriate to adapt the analysis of Vermont Agency for a different purpose: to determine whether the plaintiffs who sue under that law are bounty hunters who have been delegated power by the state rather than garden-variety private parties whose efforts to seek remedies for their own injuries also provide public benefits. In the rare circumstances of a law like SB8, then, the equitable remedy of Ex Parte Young would be available against state court clerks, the state attorney general, and any other government officials over whom jurisdiction would be necessary to vindicate constitutional rights and frustrate the state’s efforts to circumvent its legal obligations.

I will respond with three points.

I do not think there are any circumstances in which clerks and judges can be sued as the mechanism for enjoining enforcement of a law for which they are not the enforcing officials. Ex Parte Young nor § 1983 are designed to allow suits against those who enforce the laws--in § 1983 terms, those who "subject or cause to be subjected" the plaintiff to a violation. Judges and clerks do not do that.

Mike may be correct that there are federal constitutional limits on state standing or procedural rules, including equal protection limits to selectively altered standing or venue rules. But those constitutional defects do not create the predicate for offensive federal litigation where none existed; instead, they are further federal defenses to be raised in the state proceeding and that might provide a basis for SCOTUS review.

There is something to Mike's distinct between bounty hunters and ordinary plaintiffs. What flows from that is not an overhaul of the process. Instead, it is to convert the bounty hunters--who are the enforcers of the law--into state actors subject to pre-enforcement suit or to a post-enforcement § 1983 action for damages.