A county clerk in New York refused Thursday to file a more than $100,000 judgment from Texas towards a physician accused of prescribing abortion drugs to a girl close to Dallas, establishing a possible problem to legal guidelines designed to defend abortion suppliers who serve sufferers in states with abortion bans.
A Texas decide final month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York Metropolis, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state’s legislation by prescribing abortion remedy through telemedicine. The Texas legal professional normal’s workplace adopted up final week by asking a New York court docket to implement the default civil judgment, which is $113,000 with legal professional and submitting charges.
The appearing Ulster County clerk refused.
“In accordance with the New York State Defend Regulation, I’ve refused this submitting and can refuse any comparable filings that will come to our workplace. Since this determination is more likely to lead to additional litigation, I need to chorus from discussing particular particulars in regards to the scenario,” Appearing Clerk Taylor Bruck stated in a ready assertion.
Republican Texas State Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton stated he was outraged by the refusal and signaled he would take motion.
“New York is shredding the Structure to cover lawbreakers from justice, and it should finish,” Paxton stated on X. “I can’t cease my efforts to implement Texas’s pro-life legal guidelines that shield our unborn kids and moms.”
New York is amongst eight states with telemedicine defend legal guidelines, which had been thought-about a goal for abortion opponents even earlier than the standoff between officers New York and Texas.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul final month invoked her state’s shield law in rejecting Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, the place the physician was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.
Hochul on Thursday praised Bruck’s refusal and stated “New York is grateful for his braveness and customary sense.”
New York Legal professional Basic Letitia James additionally praised Bruck and stated her workplace “will at all times defend New York’s medical professionals and the folks they serve.”
Bruck grew to become appearing county clerk final yr after a resignation and has been endorsed by county Democrats for election to the submit. As county clerk, he has an administrative function in court docket filings.
A name searching for remark was made to Carpenter, who’s the co-medical director and founding father of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine. Carpenter didn’t present up for a listening to within the case in Texas.
Additionally in Texas, a Waller County decide issued a brief injunction stopping a community of Houston-area clinics from reopening. The clinics had been operated by a midwife accused by state authorities of performing unlawful abortions. The ruling extends a brief restraining order that shut down the clinics final week.
Maria Margarita Rojas has been charged by Paxton’s workplace with offering an unlawful abortion and practising drugs with no license. Two different people have also been charged. The fees within the case are the primary time authorities in Texas have filed prison counts underneath the state’s near-total abortion ban.
The legal professional normal’s workplace has filed a lawsuit that’s searching for to close down three clinics northwest of Houston that Rojas operated and that authorities allege carried out unlawful abortion procedures.
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Related Press reporter Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
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