WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Friday, the Supreme Court of Texas unanimously ruled that state officials lack authority to enforce the Texas Heartbeat Act, ending a legal challenge to the statute brought by Texas abortion providers. The justices held that the Texas Heartbeat Act may be enforced only through civil-enforcement lawsuits filed by private citizens, leaving abortion providers without any state officials to sue.

The Court’s ruling paves the way for other states to enact abortion restrictions that replicate the novel enforcement mechanism in the Texas Heartbeat Act, which immunizes state abortion laws from pre-enforcement judicial review and allows states to outlaw or restrict abortion despite the continued existence of Roe v. Wade. 

Justice Jeffrey S. Boyd wrote on behalf of the unanimous court: “Senate Bill 8 (Texas Heartbeat) provides that its requirements may be enforced by a private civil action, that no state official may bring or participate as a party in any such action, that such an action is the exclusive means to enforce the requirements, and that these restrictions apply notwithstanding any other law. Based on these provisions, we conclude that Texas law does not grant the state-agency executives named as  defendants in this case any authority to enforce the Act’s requirements, either directly or indirectly.”

America First Legal (AFL) has vigorously defended the legality of the Texas Heartbeat Act in state and federal court, arguing that abortion providers lack standing to sue state officials because no state official is charged with enforcing the law. The state supreme court’s ruling emphatically vindicates what AFL has argued from the outset of the litigation: The Texas Heartbeat Act is not subject to pre-enforcement challenge because there are no state officials that enforce the statute, and therefore no one for abortion providers to sue in a pre-enforcement lawsuit.

Read the ruling here.