EU resident wondering how the US legislative process works. For example the recent Texas abortion law, in the hypothetical situation that the majority of Texans don’t agree with the new law, what recourse do they have? What would the possibilities for repealing this law look like?
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This Texas law would still have to go thru the US Supreme Court to be decided under the laws merit. What everyone is freaking about is that the US Supreme Court allowed the Texas law to pass but it never looked at the law itself. The people who filed against the Texas law to the US Supreme Court, did not prove their case to stop the law and they had no standing with the case because the law has been held up in court all this time.
Now that the law has passed they (democrats) can file against the law for being unconstitutional.
Smh. Everyone here is losing their crap because they don’t seem to understand or want to know how the legal system work.
So to answer the OP’s original question; the primary option to oppose laws is to bring the law to the highest court in the land. Second option is to have the lawmakers repeal the law with a new set of politicians after a scheduled election
Voter pressure. Civil disobedience. Creating a proper test case. Sue the government.
Or my favorite, simply ignore the law until it goes away.
Once the court gets inundated with scam claims, and altogether too precious Reproductive Enslavement fans, the will fall apart.
Third party is trying to sue you for your abortion would have no standing. The law can’t give somebody standing in the way this one attempts .
And people should be randomly collecting the bounties on each other by bringing insincere cases and filing paperwork.
And laws like this may actually finally push Congress to codify the right to abortion if we can get rid of people like Joe Mansion.
Money. Everything everyone has already mentioned takes money, a lot of money. So you can donate money to one side or withhold it from the other to influence the process.
You can also boycott or pressure businesses to take business away from the state that has done something egregious. They have moved sporting events or movie industry for example which basically enacts a multi million or multi billion dollar fine for being dick. If the event or industry would have meant reoccurring incoming this can be the most effective and immediate means of change.
This law is thoroughly unconstitutional there’s no precedent. So nobody knows. I wonder if some clinic will just carry on performing legal abortions like they always did and hope for outside financial support to fight in court. Civil disobedience. That’s a hill I would die on. (I think). Thank god I don’t live in Texas.
Soldiers are supposed to disobey illegal orders. Civilians should be allowed to disobey illegal laws.
People have pretty much covered everything I would mention, but I’m curious how it works in the EU.
Boycotts
Nobody has mentioned this yet in these comments, but boycotting a particular state can be a powerful tool. Back in March 2016, my state legislature (North Carolina) passed a very controversial bill, House Bill 2 (HB2), more commonly known as the “Bathroom Bill”. Among other things, it barred municipalities from enacting local non-discrimination ordinances. It also mandated that transgender individuals use the bathroom corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.
The political and economic fallout was immediate. Concerts and other special events were canceled in protest. Companies like PayPal canceled plans to expand into North Carolina. Several governments (both state and local) outside of North Carolina enacted bans on official travel (for government employees) into North Carolina. The National Basketball Association moved the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte to New Orleans, the Atlantic Coast Conference moved its football championship game from Charlotte to Orlando, and the National Association for Collegiate Athletics threatened to remove all subsequent championship games in all sports from the state unless HB2 was repealed.
The governor responsible for signing HB2 into law lost his re-election bid in November 2016 by a narrow margin, almost certainly a result of his support for HB2. In 2017, under the new governor, the state legislature decided that the political and economic fallout was too much to handle, and so they repealed the law.
I won’t be surprised if people started to boycott Texas over SB8.
Vote out the people who made the laws, or rather let them know you wont vote for them when they run for reelection.
Federal law to override the local law; however, there is limited power to do this.
Courts finding the law unconstitutional.
Jury nullification: If a law is wildly unpopular, it will be difficult to find a jury that would convict (or in this case, find liable). Juries have the power to find someone not guilty/not liable even when the law and all of the evidence says they are.
Off the top of my head:
* write your current representatives, try to convince them to support new legislation
* elect new representatives
* convince the executive branch not to enforce it (Bush and later Obama did this with marijuana for instance)
* sue the government; get the judicial branch to declare the law invalid somehow
* conceal your noncompliance (we have privacy laws in part because we see disobeying the law as a legitimate political
process)
* fight your own conviction in court with good lawyers
* refuse to comply openly, securing your ability to do so with weapons
One way laws are overturned, is to have someone get arrested for violating the law, get tried & convicted then have lawyers appeal the conviction on the grounds the law is unconstitutional. The appeals go from state courts to federal courts then to the Supreme Court. It is a long process. Meanwhile, the convicted person is sitting in prison. Not a good system to overturn horrible laws.
Another way is for Congress to pass a law that invalidates the state law. If Congress passed a law saying abortion is legal under all circumstances at anytime, all state laws restricting abortion would be invalidated. The chances of this happening are very slim.
Locally, at the state level, the state legislature could rescind the law. Not likely.
So, the most assured way is the first option.
Social pressure. Write to your representative, encourage them to repeal it. Protest. Speak out.
Political pressure. Vote for a candidate who promises to try and repeal it. Vote out candidates who refuse to repeal it.
If it is thought to be an unconstitutional law, like the one in Texas is believed to be, you can break it and appeal the case till it is heard by the Supreme Court, who will rule on its constitutionality.
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