To add to this: the whole point of the private right to action is so that anti-abortion groups can target individuals in order to create precedent-setting cases. This is a mechanism that is designed to be used by well-funded groups. The threat model here isn’t some rando deciding they want to sue you, it’s a team of determined lawyers that absolutely will take your case as far as they possibly can.
> the whole point of the private right to action is so that anti-abortion groups can target individuals in order to create precedent-setting cases.
Fairly sure this is wrong. The point was to create a mechanism to sue various people "in orbit" around an abortion without involving state officials. This was supposed to "immunize" the process from any Roe v. Wade-related block.
With Roe v. Wade now struck down, Texas can basically do whatever "it" wants w.r.t abortion, and the federal government cannot intervene. SB8 at this point is possibly (just possibly) a way to reduce state spending on abortion legal cases, but not much more beyond that.
It's directly (and I believe explicitly) modelled on the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA creates a model in which private citizens can and do bring lawsuits against all types of organisations for any type of harm they can define.
This has spun out a cottage industry of disabled people who's full time occupation is visiting everything from websites to restaurants, being harmed and bringing lawsuits. While that may sound like a bad thing, it is in fact a very very cost effective way of enforcing the law quite effectively without bureaucratic bloat. Strangely, it's been quite successful. The history of why this decision was made is very interesting.
For all your devs, this is why large American companies care so much about accessibility on their websites - because it creates an almost unlimited liability on their end if you do it badly. Companies now scan websites for accessibility as soon as they're launched, then others will buy the set of companies which 'fail', then visit those sites in order to be harmed. It's an interesting little cottage industry which keeps legitimate disability rights enforced quite nicely without too big a government.
The purpose of the private right to action was to get around Roe/Casey prior to the Supreme Court overruling both cases. The law was specifically designed to evade judicial review.
As a private plaintiff, you can typically sue a state official that is charged with enforcing a law in federal court on constitutional grounds. SB8 is written in such a way that state officials are barred from enforcing the law. Thus, it is effectively impossible to challenge in federal court because there is no state official that enforces the law, only private citizens, and thus there is no proper defendant.
My impression is that it fits the pattern of trying to disrupt society and government and create a vigilante citizenry, similar to encouraging people to arm themselves and use their firearms to prevent crimes.
No idea what you're even trying to reference in your second sentence, but the first sentence "community law enforcement" is a red flag in my book. The law creates a fiscal incentive for people to report their neighbors for actions that were federally protected at the time this law was passed. Neighbor vs. neighbor. Citizen vs. citizen. We spend more on policing than any country in the world and yet still need to deputize citizens in a heavily armed state? It's not my neighbor's damn business to know if someone in my household seeks an abortion.
If fiscally incentivizing vigilantism isn't dystopian I don't know what is.
Deputization and vigilantism are antonyms, your framing is incoherent.
An elected legislature sanctioning civil action is "dystopian", but rioting and arson? Intimidating judges at their homes? Laundering a decade of domestic terrorism into universities and district attorneys' offices? Never heard of that stuff!
The discussion was about abortion in the context of digital privacy. You are the one who brought up all of these other things, which have nothing to do with the topic at hand. It's whataboutism and not worth engaging with.
Vigilantism without oversight, checks and balances quickly devolves into posses terrorizing and brutalizing people they simply don't like. The US has a long history of this.
Vigilantism is not the same thing as community-led policing from members of said communities.
That's nice, but none of this has anything to do with "vigilantism." The other guy only used that word because he thought it sounded scary. If either of you knew what it meant you would understand that government-sanctioned action, for example a lawsuit with standing provided by statute, is the complete opposite of vigilantism in its entire definition.
I've never heard that term. Usually, the state has a monopoly on violence and justice - that's a definition of a sovereign state. Law enforcement is performed by police. Not sure where the other stuff you mention comes from.
