The worst person you know just filed the worst abortion lawsuit in Texas
Anti-abortion Texas lawyer Jonathan Mitchell is at it again. This time, he’s representing Jerry Rodriguez, a Texas man who is suing a California doctor for allegedly mailing abortion medication to his girlfriend.
But as usual with Mitchell, there’s much more here than just the travails of Rodriguez.
First, the lawsuit is teeing up an attack on abortion pill manufacturers and distributors. Second, it’s an attempt to get a court to rule that the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that criminalized the mailing of “obscene materials,” should apply to abortion pills to prevent the mailing of them, even in states where abortion is legal.
The complaint is, in a word, gross. It’s littered with references to how Dr. Remy Coeytaux “murdered his unborn child” and how his girlfriend, Kendal Garza, “killed Mr. Rodriguez’s unborn son with abortion pills that were illegally obtained.”
It’s a veritable cavalcade of statements about ownership. His unborn son, his murdered child. Mine, mine, mine.
Never one to miss an opportunity to swing for the fences, Mitchell doesn’t just say that Coeytaux is on the hook for wrongful death. The manufacturers and distributors of the abortion pills allegedly taken by Garza are also liable. Per Mitchell, that liability comes from the Comstock Act, which the complaint says “imposes federal criminal liability on anyone who knowingly sends or receives abortion pills through the mail or by using any express company, common carrier, or interactive computer service.”
Except it doesn’t.
Though conservatives are incredibly eager to use the Comstock Act to decimate abortion rights, even in pro-choice states, no court has successfully ruled that it applies to abortion pills. Hardcore right-wing Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk did rule that the Comstock Act bans the mailing of abortion pills, but when the case made its way to the Supreme Court, he was overruled.
Mitchell’s complaint treats his allegation as settled law. This isn’t a legal argument; it’s a polemic.
Related | Texas wants to force red-state abortion bans into blue states
Mitchell wants an injunction to bar Coeytaux from sending abortion pills to Texas. That’s fairly normal—if horrible—given that Texas does have a very robust set of anti-abortion laws, in large part thanks to Mitchell. But then it gets much weirder and much worse.
Not content to only seek relief for Rodriguez, Mitchell wants the court to certify a class, which would allow him to pursue a class action lawsuit. Who would be in the class? Literally every man. No, seriously. The proposed class is “all current and future fathers of unborn children in the United States.” But in theory, an injunction and class action in this case would only apply to Coeytaux.
However, Mitchell states in the complaint that he plans to add the manufacturers and distributors as defendants once he identifies them. Those companies are definitely not in Texas, and they are definitely not bound by Texas’ rabid anti-abortion laws. At best, they could be barred from sending pills into the state, but that’s not what Mitchell is proposing here.
Mitchell’s proposed injunction is that anyone who distributes abortion medication is violating the Comstock Act. And since Mitchell’s proposed class includes every man, they would be able to invoke the Comstock Act to block anyone from obtaining abortion pills, even where it’s legal.
In normal times, this sort of case would quickly be dismissed. But we do not live in normal times, and we do not have normal judges. Mitchell filed this case in the Galveston Division of the Southern District of Texas, where there is only one judge.
So Mitchell knew that he would draw Trump-appointed Judge Jeff Brown, who has a record of being actively hostile toward abortion rights, including opposing Roe v. Wade and serving on an advisory board for an anti-choice organization in Texas. It’s not quite as blatant as the GOP judge shopping efforts to get cases in front of Kacsmaryk, but it’s still bad.
This is literally Mitchell’s life's work. He was the architect of the Texas law that allows anyone to sue anyone they allege aided or abetted an abortion. He keeps trying to depose abortion funds and researchers, and in 2024, he filed petitions targeting individual women for traveling out of state to get abortions. He also handled the case of a Texas man who sued his ex-wife’s friends, alleging they helped facilitate her abortion.
Mitchell’s arguments here are nonsense, but that doesn’t matter when the courts are stuffed with conservatives eager to ban abortion. He’ll never stop trying to find new, innovative ways to deprive people of their right to choose.
What a way to live.