DOJ and Texas face off in court over restrictive abortion law

Lawyers from the Justice Department and the state of Texas faced off in court Friday over a lawsuit challenging the state's restrictive abortion law.

Lawyers from the Justice Department and the state of Texas squared off in court Friday as the Biden administration seeks an order that would halt enforcement of the state's restrictive abortion law.

In an overnight filing, DOJ officials accused Texas of mounting a "brazen" effort to enact a law purely designed to obstruct women's right to an abortion while evading all traditional methods of judicial review.

"S.B. 8’s novel enforcement scheme is calculated to accomplish what no state should be able to do in our federal system: deter, suppress, and render moot rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States," department officials said in their filing. "The State does not dispute that S.B. 8 has virtually eliminated previability abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in the State. Moreover, the approach Texas has taken need not be confined to the abortion context. If this mechanism works here, it would serve as a blueprint for the suppression of nearly any other constitutional right recognized by the Supreme Court but resented by a state government."

S.B. 8, or the 'Texas Heartbeat Act,' bars physicians from providing abortions once they detect a so-called fetal heartbeat -- which can be seen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. But the language of the law makes it so private citizens can sue anyone they "reasonably believed" provided an abortion, and effectively removes any government officials from being part of its enforcement.