Texas asked a federal appeals court Friday to step in “as soon as possible” to restore the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Oct.8 (UPI) — Texas asked a federal appeals court Friday to step in “as soon as possible” to restore the state’s near-total abortion ban. The state filed its emergency request for an appeal two days after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked the new abortion law in response to a lawsuit brought by the Biden administration. The state had quickly filed a notice of its intent to appeal in both courts after Pitman’s order on Wednesday night. In Friday’s request, state attorneys argue that Pitman’s order to temporarily block the law at the United States’ request “violates the separation of powers at every turn.” They ask the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — considered to be perhaps the nation’s most conservative appellate court — to stop Pitman’s order. State attorneys argued the U.S. overstepped by suing the state since it will never be subject of one of the lawsuits allowed by it and since the state does not enforce the law directly. “This court’s immediate intervention is necessary to vindicate Texas’s sovereign interest in preventing a single federal district court from superintending every Texas court,” attorneys wrote in Friday’s request.
