Oops: Texas Republicans’ abortion law gave California new idea to restrict gun rights
Our Editorial Board warned a couple months ago that the creative enforcement mechanism in the new Texas abortion law — civil suits that anyone can file — would backfire. For instance, we posited, New York could ban AR-15 rifles and let private lawsuits take down gun companies or shops.
We should have known that no one beats California to the progressive punch.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this weekend that he wants a law that allows court cases against “anyone who manufactures, distributes or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts” in California.
We weren’t the only ones to see it coming. A gun-rights group filed a brief in the Supreme Court case on Texas’ law warning of the possible consequences. Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone on the matter in a hearing, and Stone’s tepid response was that Congress could supersede such laws.
Some supporters of the Texas law comfort themselves with the idea that the high court would protect civil rights because — unlike abortion, they argue — gun rights and free speech are expressly written in the Constitution.
“California gun owners will violate the law knowing that they’ll be sued and knowing that the Supreme Court has their back because the right to keep and bear arms is clearly in the Constitution, and the courts have clearly and consistently upheld it,” Sen. Bryan Hughes, the Mineola Republican who authored the law, told the Texas Tribune.
Hughes apparently didn’t notice the high court’s initial reluctance to weigh in on his statute, thanks to its too-clever-by-half enforcement mechanism. And he must not be imaginative enough to ponder liberal judges twisting the law to crack down on behaviors they don’t like.
There’s been talk of legal actions against coal companies, too. If Hughes can’t envision blue-state lawmakers expanding the definition of “hate speech” to allow suits for all kinds of conservative opinions, he underestimates the competition.
And rather than learning a lesson, Republicans elsewhere are doubling down. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely GOP presidential front-runner if former President Donald Trump doesn’t run again, is pushing for a law with a Texas-like enforcement mechanism to allow parents to sue school districts over classroom lessons stemming from “critical race theory.”
This deviates substantially from the conservative principal that governing should be done by the body closest and most accountable to the people whenever possible. Republicans have spent decades decrying unelected judges’ decisions attempting to overhaul huge swaths of society.
Nowhere was that more true than abortion. Roe vs. Wade was always the No. 1 example of a court going too far and disrupting the democratic process. Even liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed. Now, Republicans are cool with empowering judges on all kinds of social issues.
This model also risks interrupting significant momentum on the issues. Abortion rates have declined for years, thanks in part to activists’ arguments against the procedure. (They’ve been helped a great deal, of course, by advanced in-utero imaging that make it much harder to be callous about a growing human life.)
On the subject of race in schools, a new movement has already had tremendous success, landing conservatives on school boards, helping elect Republicans statewide in Virginia for the first time for years, and turning the obsession with identity politics into a winning issue.
Now, instead of winning arguments, they would risk losing court cases. That’s just politically dumb.
The Texas abortion law encapsulates two dangerous trends in politics: Allowing the end to justify the means and failing or refusing to anticipate unintended consequences.
Hughes and his short-sighted compatriots have set the table, and liberals will happily feast.
Editor’s note: A version of this column originally appeared in our opinion newsletter, Worth Discussion. It’s delivered every Wednesday with a fresh take on the news and a roundup of our best editorials, columns and other opinion content. Sign up here.
