“New York’s defend regulation was created to guard sufferers and suppliers,” stated New York Lawyer Common Letitia James.
On Thursday, a New York county clerk refused to file a Texas courtroom judgment of over $100,000 towards a New York physician accused of prescribing abortion capsules to a lady close to Dallas.
“New York is grateful for his braveness and customary sense,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said on Thursday in response to the county clerk’s choice to reject the submitting of the judgment.
The case facilities on Margaret Carpenter, a doctor based mostly in New York. In December 2024, Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton filed a civil lawsuit towards her, alleging that she had violated Texas regulation by prescribing abortion medicine through telemedicine to a affected person in Texas. After Carpenter and her legal professional failed to reply or seem at a listening to in early 2025, a Texas judge issued a default judgment in February, ordering her to pay over $100,000 in penalties and prohibiting her from prescribing abortion capsules to Texas residents. In response to the Austin American-Statesman, the quantity owed will accrue daily interest at a price of seven.5 p.c till paid in full.
In March, the Texas Lawyer Common’s workplace attempted to enforce the judgment in New York. Appearing Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck rejected the request, citing the state’s defend regulation. “In accordance with the New York State Protect Regulation, I’ve refused this submitting and can refuse any related filings that will come to our workplace,” Bruck said in a statement.
Texas’s case focusing on Carpenter now marks a landmark problem to one of eight shield laws handed throughout the nation that are designed to protect telemedicine abortion suppliers from authorized actions and extradition requests by states with restrictive abortion bans. Such legal guidelines also prohibit state officers from cooperating with out-of-state courtroom orders associated to abortion care.
“New York’s defend regulation was created to guard sufferers and suppliers from out-of-state anti-choice assaults, and we is not going to enable anybody to undermine well being care suppliers’ skill to ship crucial care to their sufferers,” New York Lawyer Common Letitia James said in a statement. “My workplace will at all times defend New York’s medical professionals and the folks they serve.”
Texas is the first state with an abortion ban to pursue legal action towards an out-of-state supplier protected by a defend regulation. Louisiana adopted shortly after, filing the first criminal charges towards the identical abortion supplier. In February, Hochul invoked the shield law to dam an extradition request from Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who sought to have Carpenter transferred to face these prices. Nonetheless, as a result of extradition choices extra so fall below executive discretion, the Texas judgment — not Louisiana’s request — represents the first significant legal test of New York’s defend regulation.
Paxton, in the meantime, denounced the New York clerk’s refusal to implement the Texas judgment. He said he was “outraged” by Bruck’s choice to defend what he known as a “radical abortionist” accused of “illegally peddling harmful medicine throughout state traces.”
Along with focusing on out-of-state suppliers, Paxton has recently pursued felony prices towards suppliers inside Texas. His workplace has charged practitioners with illegally performing abortions — a second-degree felony — and training medication and not using a license, a third-degree felony. These prosecutions are the primary introduced below Texas’s near-total abortion ban.
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