DOJ Files Baseless Suit Against Texas Over Its Abortion Law
10th September 2021
Paul Mirengoff, an Actual Lawyer, at Power Line.
Whatever one’s views of the Texas law, the DOJ’s suit is baseless. Its filing demonstrates that under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland, the DOJ has become a hyper-partisan, unprincipled, and lawless tool of the left.
The Department of Justice lacks authority to file any lawsuit unless a statute grants litigation authority to the Attorney General. The DOJ’s complaint cites no statute granting such authority.
None exists. Otherwise the DOJ would have cited it.
Merrick Garland may consider the Texas statute unconstitutional. He may be right. But he lacks the free-standing authority to challenge statutes he deems unconstitutional, no matter how much the Democrats’ leftist base clamors for him to do so.
And the court will throw it out on standing grounds. So this is just Virtue Signaling on the part of the Biden mal-administration. What it does demonstrate, however, is what a terrible pick Garland would have made for the Supreme Court, and how right Republicans in the Senate were to ignore his nomination.