Sacks @ 00:54:40Right
politicsgovernment
In a future case, the Texas SB8 abortion law will be ruled unconstitutional, primarily on grounds related to its standing/enforcement mechanism rather than on the underlying abortion right.
I believe they will. I believe that this law will be found unconstitutional. Not necessarily because of abortion, but just because they're changing the legal definition of standing in a way that flies against everything we know about how the court system works.View on YouTube
Explanation
There has been at least one subsequent case in which Texas SB8 was held unconstitutional on grounds focused on its novel standing/enforcement mechanism rather than the underlying abortion right, which matches the prediction’s core claim.
Key state‑court ruling (matches the prediction most closely)
- In Van Stean v. Texas Right to Life (Travis County, 98th Dist. Ct., Dec. 9, 2021), Texas state trial Judge David Peeples issued a declaratory judgment holding SB8’s enforcement mechanism unconstitutional. He found that SB8:
- authorizes lawsuits by parties who have suffered no injury (a standing problem),
- unconstitutionally delegates enforcement power to private parties, and
- imposes a punitive $10,000 civil penalty without due process, under the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling explicitly targeted SB8’s private “bounty” enforcement scheme and did not invalidate the abortion restriction on substantive abortion-rights grounds.(reason.com) Contemporary coverage described this as a judge ruling the Texas abortion law unconstitutional while noting that the decision did not stop the law’s practical operation statewide.(courthousenews.com)
Supporting federal ruling (also emphasizes the enforcement scheme)
- In United States v. Texas, federal District Judge Robert Pitman (W.D. Tex., Oct. 6, 2021) issued a 113‑page order blocking enforcement of SB8, concluding that the law was facially unconstitutional and describing its private-enforcement design as a contrived attempt to evade judicial review and established abortion precedents.(en.wikipedia.org) The Fifth Circuit quickly stayed his injunction, and the Supreme Court later dismissed the case as improvidently granted, so this did not produce a lasting nationwide invalidation, but it is still a judicial ruling that SB8 was unconstitutional.
Why this is scored as “right,” with caveats
- The prediction (normalized) was: “In a future case, the Texas SB8 abortion law will be ruled unconstitutional, primarily on grounds related to its standing/enforcement mechanism rather than on the underlying abortion right.” That has occurred: Judge Peeples’ decision squarely held SB8’s enforcement mechanism unconstitutional on standing/delegation/due‑process theories and explicitly framed the dispute as about civil procedure and enforcement, not about the substantive right to abortion.(reason.com)
- However, these rulings have had limited practical and precedential effect. SB8 remained formally “in force” and functioned as intended until Texas’s broader post‑Dobbs criminal abortion bans took over, and Texas and other states have continued to copy the private-enforcement model in new anti‑abortion measures.(en.wikipedia.org) No high appellate court (state or federal) has yet issued a definitive, generally controlling decision striking down SB8’s enforcement mechanism across the board.
So, while the ultimate, system‑wide invalidation Sacks likely envisioned has not (yet) happened, the literal prediction that a future case would hold SB8 unconstitutional, on standing/enforcement‑mechanism grounds rather than on abortion rights themselves, has in fact come true.