Bills restricting abortion, including one that bans procedure as early as six weeks, gets Texas Senate OK

The slate of bills must still go to the House for approval.

By Shannon Najmabadi, The Texas Tribune.

The Texas Senate on Tuesday approved five bills restricting access to abortion, including a priority measure that could ban abortions before many women know they are pregnant.

The measures, which abortion rights advocates call some of the most "extreme" nationwide, are among the earliest bills to be debated by the full Senate — whose presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, has given two abortion proposals top billing this session. The bills were passed 19-12. They must still be approved by the House before becoming law.

Senate Bill 8 would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, which can be as early as six weeks, according to a legislative analysis. The bill has an exception for medical emergencies but not for rape or incest.

The bill would also let anyone in Texas sue an abortion provider if they believe they violated state laws, regardless of whether they had a connection to someone who had an abortion or to the provider. A person who knowingly “aids or abets” others getting abortions prohibited under state law could also be hit with lawsuits, according to a bill draft.

“We're setting loose an army of people to go sue somebody under a bill that will likely be held unconstitutional,” state Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, said during a debate about the bill. “They could be sued over and over and over again having to pay $10,000,” which is the minimum proposed damages in the bill.

Similar “heartbeat bills” have been passed in other states but have been blocked by the courts.

State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, the lead author of SB 8, said unique legal language in the bill makes him believe it will be upheld. It’s intended to “protect our most vulnerable Texans when the heartbeat is present,” he said.

Senate Bill 9, another Patrick priority, would bar nearly all abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision or otherwise altered abortion laws. It would create a possible fine of $100,000 for doctors who perform abortions after the law goes into effect. Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, said the fine for sexual assault in Texas has a $10,000 maximum.

“Why would we punish a doctor who performs an abortion on a victim of rape or incest more than the actual rapist?” she asked.

“I would say that the problem here is not the amount of the fine on the doctor but on a rapist,” state Sen. Angela Paxton, SB 9’s author, responded.

Other legislation approved by the Senate Tuesday would bar later-term abortions in the case of severe fetal abnormalities — closing what the bill’s authors have likened to a “loophole” and forcing people to carry ill-fated or unviable pregnancies to term, according to experts and advocates. Women in that situation would be provided with information about perinatal palliative care, or support services, which they may not have been aware of, the bill’s author said.

Another bill, Senate Bill 394, would bar pill-induced abortions after seven weeks. Guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration approve the use of abortion pills up to 10 weeks. Nearly 40% of abortions performed on Texas residents in 2019 were medication-induced, according to state statistics.

Most abortions in Texas are banned after 20 weeks. Women seeking an abortion must get a sonogram at least 24 hours before the procedure, and their doctor must describe the sonogram and make audible any heartbeat.

Dozens of abortion-related measures have been filed this legislative session, including one that would open up abortion providers to criminal charges that carry the death penalty. Anti-abortion activists have urged lawmakers to challenge the Roe v. Wade decision, citing the new conservative makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly every Republican in the Senate has signed on as an author of SB 8, one of Patrick’s priorities, as has Brownsville Democrat Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., who said during a debate Monday that he believes life begins at conception.

A sixth abortion-related bill advanced Tuesday would require a contractor to offer counseling and other resources to a person seeking an abortion. That person would receive a pin to verify she received the offer, and the pin would then be destroyed, said Paxton, the bill’s author. Earlier bill drafts said the woman would get an identifying number that would be stored in a state database.

Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, asked what services the women would be referred to — pointing to how poor most parents must be to qualify for Medicaid in Texas. A parent with one child would need to make less than $200 a month to qualify, the strictest criteria of any state, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“So we're going to spend $7 million annually for somebody who is less qualified than their doctor to give them advice on something that they probably aren't eligible for?” she asked Paxton.

Paxton said the bill could connect women to support services like housing, resume development, child care and adoption services, and said it could help women who would prefer to carry their pregnancy to term if the circumstances were different.

“If she wants to call” and ask for her code, she can get it and just hang up, Paxton said. Her bill was passed by the Senate 20-11.

GOP Texas senators push shakeup of regional appeals courts in move likely to reverse Democrats’ gains

Dallas would be in a district with Austin – and Llano and San Saba – under Houston Sen. Joan Huffman’s consolidation plan.

By Allie Morris and Robert T. Garrett, Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate’s ruling Republicans advanced bills Thursday that would dramatically reshape state appellate courts, likely reversing the Democrats’ recent judicial gains in big cities and seizing control from Austin-area appeals court judges in major lawsuits on school finance, voting rights and redistricting.

Republicans on the Senate Jurisprudence Committee approved a bill that would consolidate the 14 court of appeals districts into seven, over strong objections from Democrats, civil rights advocates and jurists.

Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, described the restructuring as a much-needed way to slim down the number of courts while evenly spreading out the currently lopsided workload.

“The current system creates inefficiency and confusion for litigants,” Huffman said of her legislation, Senate Bill 11. “It is so important to the jurisprudence and judicial economy of our state that we address these issues.”

But justices from across Texas strongly criticized the proposal in the bill’s first public hearing Thursday. They warned the change would knock Black and Hispanic justices off the appellate bench and refocus attention on nettlesome administrative matters, just as the courts are facing a deluge of cases delayed by the pandemic.

“It seems to me like we’re taking a sledgehammer when a tack hammer could fix or resolve this,” said Chief Justice Robert Burns of the 5th District Court of Appeals in Dallas.

The overhaul would cut the number of appeals court districts in half starting in 2023 and rearrange them in ways critics say would disenfranchise voters from minority communities and rural areas.

The district that includes Dallas County would expand from six counties to 21 — and reach as far south as Austin and west to Llano and San Saba. Tarrant County would be folded into a far-flung district with corners in Waco, Wichita Falls and Texarkana.

Judicial candidates running in the larger districts would need more votes to win, and likely bigger campaign coffers to match, several jurists testified.

Voting rights concerns

Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, suggested the way the districts are redrawn could violate the federal Voting Rights Act, a criticism echoed by several others.

“The proposed maps are going to significantly dilute the voting strength of communities of color,” said 5th District Court of Appeals Justice Erin Nowell. Statewide, Nowell said she is the only African American out of 80 justices on the courts of appeals.

“It would make it such that, and virtually guarantee, that the number of justices of color that are on the bench right now would lose in the next election,” she said.

The suggested overhaul comes after major political swings.

In 2018, Texas Democrats flipped state appeals courts based in Dallas, Houston and Austin, which gave them control of seven of the state’s 14 appeals courts.

The victory in the Dallas area’s 5th Court of Appeals was ignited by eight Democrats running on what was called the “slate of eight.” A Democrat had not been elected to the court since 1992. But in 2018, Democrats seized the majority on the court, including the post of chief justice.

“It seems ironic that these changes are coming all of a sudden, now that Democrats are beginning to win these contests for the appeals court,” said Jeff Dalton, the political strategist for the 5th Court’s victorious Democratic slate. “We have probably flipped more courts of appeals benches than any other kind of race in the last couple of election cycles.”

Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, prodded Huffman on whether politics played into the redesign. He said he’s heard predictions that the rewrite could result in five Republican-dominated appellate courts and two Democratic ones.

Huffman said she didn’t know what the partisan breakdown would be if an election were held today. The districts were redrawn with the objective to address uneven caseloads, she said.

“We looked at trying to make it accessible to all citizens,” she said.

One of the few to testify Thursday in support of the overhaul was Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a group trying to curb civil lawsuits against business. General counsel Lee Parsley said the change is needed to decrease the number of appeals courts and eliminate overlapping jurisdictions.

“It is all a creation that happened over 100 years of building the court system in that moment to fix that particular problem,” he said. “We favor a change and this is as good a time as any.”

First major restructuring since early 1980s

If adopted, it would mark the first major restructuring of the state’s appeals courts since the early 1980s, Huffman said. Lawyers and jurists testified they had no opportunity for input before the hearing Thursday.

The bill passed out of committee on a 3-2 party line vote, as did another bill that would significantly change the appellate process.

Senate Bill 1529 could neutralize the influence of liberal Austin voters on courts that traditionally have handled big lawsuits against the state, which are typically filed in district court in Travis County. It would yank all appeals of complex suits involving state agencies and leaders from the currently all-Democratic 3rd Court of Appeals based in Austin and give them to a newly created appellate court, the “Texas Court of Appeals,” with its justices elected statewide. At the moment, all statewide elected justices — both civil and criminal — are Republicans.

In a statement of her intent filed with an analysis of her initial draft, Huffman cited a need for experienced judges “to apply highly specialized precedent in complex areas of law.”

Currently, the major state lawsuits are frequently transferred among the 14 intermediate appellate courts to equalize dockets, Huffman noted. That has a downside, she argued.

“These courts have varying levels of experience with the complex legal issues involved in cases of statewide significance, resulting in inconsistent results for litigants,” she said. “This not only brings volatility to the state’s jurisprudence, it does so at taxpayer expense.”

The cases that would be affected could include some of the most high-profile legal battles in Texas, such as decades of challenges to how the Legislature funds public schools.

Michael Gomez, an assistant county attorney in El Paso County, testified that the current structure works just fine.

“Creating a new appellate court would just create a non-necessary cost to taxpayers to enable state agencies to have a home-field advantage in a friendly forum,” he said.

Staff writer Gromer Jeffers Jr. contributed reporting from Dallas.

Opinion: Why Texas must change its policy on runaway youth

By Byron Sanders, Austin American-Statesman

According to a report by The National Runaway Switchboard, more than 1.5 million youth experience a runaway episode each year. In Texas, that decision can have a long and lasting impact on youths’ lives, in large part because of how the state treats the act of running away.

What many Texans may not know is that it is against the law for a child to run away from home in our state. Texas is one of less than 10 states in the country where this is still the case.

Running away is classified in Texas as a ‘status offense’ - an act that is a violation of law only because of a youth’s status as a minor. Running away from home risks a potentially detrimental contact with the justice system including detention in juvenile facilities.

In addition, if a status offender violates a court order related to the status offense — running away again, for example — a court can punish the youth with a term of secure confinement. These instances of secure confinement do nothing to help youth and can, in fact, make it more likely that youth continue to engage in delinquent behavior.

Rather than address root issues, Texas’ current recourse for runaway youth leads to further isolation. The factors that may lead youth to run away from home are often outside of their control — they may be leaving behind an unsafe or abusive environment, difficulties at school or dealing with unmet mental health needs. According to the National Runaway Safeline, “58% of youth who reached out to NRS indicated family dynamics as a reason for seeking crisis intervention.”

We must change the way that Texas considers runaway youth and create policy that would provide the help and resources they need and deserve. One way forward is through a recent bill introduced by State Sen. Nathan Johnson (D-Dallas).

SB 404 (HB 1709) would decriminalize running away as a status offense and prohibit juvenile detention for youth who have run away. Instead, the bill would help redirect youth to emergency shelters and crisis intervention services through the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services . SB 404 also prevents status offenders of the remaining offenses from being held in a secure facility, either pre- or post-adjudication. Instead of secure facilities, youth could be detained in juvenile process offices and places of non-secure custody for up to 6 hours, or in non-secure correction facilities for up to 24 hours. Finally, Sen. Johnson’s bill eliminates the use of a violation of a court order to sentence status offenders to post-adjudication secure confinement.

At Big Thought, we know that we must address the root causes of an issue, not simply respond to its consequences. Big Thought’s work with juvenile justice intervention and Creative Solutions, our nationally recognized arts-as-workforce intervention program for adjudicated youth, has shown us that punitive measures are not the way forward. And by continuing to consider running away as a status offense, we prohibit youth from tapping into their inherent greatness.

All youth are born with greatness and we have the responsibility to create the conditions for that greatness to shine. Reimagining how we treat those who've run away from home explicitly empowers the lives of youth who've been most marginalized. That's the kind of future they deserve.

Passing SB 404 is a step toward this future. If you’d like to support SB 404, reach out to your state representatives.

Sanders is the CEO of Big Thought, an education-focused nonprofit based in Dallas.