Cameras are everywhere you look, security cameras record where we go and some states are trying to use them to root out trans children getting life needed healthcare.
Recent state and local legal maneuvers signal that Texas’ conservative movement could be wading into a complicated constitutional morass the country hasn’t dealt with since before the Civil War.Texas TribuneBY ELEANOR KLIBANOFF AND WILLIAM MELHADOFebruary 9, 2024In the months since Texas outlawed abortion and prohibited adolescents from receiving gender-transition care, women have flooded abortion clinics in nearby states and parents with transgender children have moved to places where puberty blockers and hormone therapy remain legal.So now, Texas conservatives are testing the limits of their power beyond state lines.Some cities and counties have passed so-called travel bans aimed at stopping Texans from driving to abortion appointments in other states. Meanwhile, Attorney General Ken Paxton has demanded medical records from at least two out-of-state clinics that provide gender-affirming care to minors.“This request from the Texas Attorney General is a clear attempt to intimidate providers of gender-affirming care and parents and families seeking that care outside of Texas and other states with bans,” Dr. Izzy Lowell, a Georgia physician who received one such demand letter, said in a statement.These recent efforts to restrict or scrutinize what Texans do out-of-state raise an important question: Just how far does Texas’ authority over its residents extend?
The long eye of the law is watching were you “go.”
Okay who remembers your history lesson about the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 or were you dozing that day in class? The Fugitive Slave Act required non-slave states to return who were escaping slavery to northern states. Well can Texas force northern states to turn over medical data on abortions and trans healthcare?
These recent efforts to restrict or scrutinize what Texans do out-of-state raise an important question: Just how far does Texas’ authority over its residents extend?The question of extraterritoriality — when and whether a state can impose its laws beyond its borders — is largely unresolved, legal experts say. It just hasn’t come before the courts that often. And while the right to travel is well-established in the U.S. Constitution, the local travel bans are enforced through private lawsuits, a legal loophole the U.S. Supreme Court has so far allowed to stand.When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to set their own laws on abortion, it put them on a political crash course with each other. These recent legal maneuvers from conservatives in Texas indicate a willingness to wade into a Constitutional morass the country hasn’t dealt with since the lead-up to the Civil War.
Many states including Connecticut prohibit medical reproductive healthcare information be sent to other states without the persons permission (Note: Gender Confirming Surgery and trans healthcare involves reproductive healthcare).
In 1974, just after Roe was decided, the high court ruled in Bigelow v. Virginia that a “state does not acquire power or supervision over the internal affairs of another State merely because the welfare and health of its own citizens may be affected when they travel to that State.”But in a Columbia Law Review article, legal scholars David Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel Rebouché note that, in addition to being an old ruling that focused on First Amendment arguments, Biglow relied in part on Roe v. Wade.“The current U.S. Supreme Court, now that it has eviscerated Roe, could revisit Bigelow’s anti-extraterritoriality principle,” they wrote.
The San Francisco Gate wrote,
The 2021 lawsuit, given class-action status in September, alleges that Digital Recognition Network is breaking a California law meant to regulate the use of automatic license plate readers. DRN, a Fort Worth-based company, uses plate-scanning cameras to create location data for people’s vehicles, then sells that data to marketers, car repossessors and insurers.
Okay substitute the state of Texas for “data to marketers, car repossessors and insurers” suppose they buy license plate data for all Texas license plates pulling into Planned Parenthood in New Haven parking lot?
Suppose the Republicans gain control of Congress and the presidency and they pass the Fugitive Abortion Act of 2024 where states have to report all out of state abortions and trans healthcare? Do you think that sounds har fetched?
“Your papers please.”
An update on my blog to this topic is here,
Earlier in the week I wrote about Republican states trying to get abortion data and trans people seeking healthcare from other states, well now they are going after support networks!!!
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