Suing Texas State Senate Bill 8 Plaintiffs under Federal Law for Violations of Constitutional Rights

Many people are deriding (or celebrating) the exceptional—and exceptionally deceptive—device of the Texas legislature to so-called “deputize” private individuals as government enforcement agents to carry out a state anti-abortion law that, at present, violates the U.S. Constitution. The law at issue, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 8, is extraordinarily broad, and provides that anyone can sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy (including, if read literally, the Uber driver who drove the woman to the clinic). The law awards recovery of no less than $10,000 and makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape. Actually, the deceptive nature of the law can be subdivided into three devices. I’ll address each in turn with the principal aim of suing someone under federal law for bringing suit under the Texas state law. In this respect, I’ll be going quite a bit further than those who seek simply to spotlight the unconstitutionality of the Texas law. Rather, I’m going after the plaintiff who sues under it.

The Legislature Speaks

The state senate pressured the board to rescind the decision on the DuBois Club under threat of budgetary implications for the university; the governor supported the board. Letters poured into the president’s office, and Henry asked Millet to delay implementation of the decision. A bill to repeal the Clabaugh Act was introduced in the legislature and easily defeated. A campus Committee to End the War was formed. At the University of Wisconsin a Dow Chemical campus recruiter drew protests. The chapter also examines a little-known Illinois connection with Dow’s napalm product.

“Friends-and-Neighbors” Mobilization: A Field Experimental Replication and Extension

Key [1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: A.A. Knopf] observed voters tend to support local candidates at higher rates, a phenomenon he termed “friends-and-neighbors” voting. In a recent study, Panagopoulos et al. [2017. Political Behavior 39(4): 865–82] deployed a nonpartisan randomized field experiment to show that voters in the September 2014 primary election for state senate in Massachusetts were mobilized on the basis of shared geography. County ties and, to a lesser extent, hometown ties between voters and candidates have the capacity to drive voters to the polls. We partnered with a national party organization to conduct a similar, partisan experiment in the November 2014 general election for the Pennsylvania state senate. We find localism cues can stimulate voting in elections, including in neighboring communities that lie beyond the towns and counties in which the target candidate resided, at least among voters favorably disposed to a candidate and even when voters reside in the home county of the opponent.

Is Drug Testing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Applicants a Good Use of Government Funds?

In March of 2017, the Arkansas State Senate voted to make permanent its two-year pilot program to screen all eligible Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) applicants for drugs and test individuals suspected of using drugs. Proponents of the new law argue that it will deter drug use and save the state money through withheld benefits of otherwise qualified new applicants and those up for renewal that test positive and do not enter a treatment program. This paper examines the marginal cost and marginal benefit of drug testing TANF recipients to determine if it is financially valuable for the state of Arkansas.