Texas sues New York official for refusing to take action against abortion provider

Source: The Guardian

Tue 29 Jul 2025 12.58 EDT
Last modified on Tue 29 Jul 2025 14.00 EDT


Texas has sued a New York official for refusing to take action against an abortion provider, teeing up a state-versus-state battle that is widely expected to end up before the US supreme court.

Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, has petitioned the New York state supreme court to order a county clerk to enforce a fine against Dr Margaret Carpenter, a New York doctor accused of mailing abortion pills across state lines. Paxton accused Carpenter last year of mailing abortion pills to a Texas woman in defiance of Texas’s ban on virtually all abortions. After Carpenter failed to show up in a Texas court, a judge ordered her to pay more than $100,000 in penalties.

But the acting Ulster county clerk, Taylor Bruck, in New York has twice rejected Paxton’s efforts to levy that fine. Under New York’s “shield law”, state law enforcement officials are blocked from complying with out-of-state prosecutions against abortion providers who ship pills to patients, even if those patients are located outside New York state.

“No matter where they reside, pro-abortion extremists who send drugs designed to kill the unborn into Texas will face the full force of our state’s pro-life laws,” Paxton, a Republican, said in a statement announcing Monday’s filing. Bruck, 34, said that he was just following New York state law. “I’m just proud to live in a state that has something like the shield law here to protect our healthcare providers from out-of-state proceedings like this,” Bruck said. “This has the potential of getting appealed up and up and up.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/texas-new-york-lawsuit-abortion-provider