Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking New York judges to declare New York’s Department of Reproductive Medicine unconstitutional law. They are unlikely to do so. State officials in New York have so far presented a united front against anti-abortion authorities’ efforts to target New York residents. Furthermore, the law is on their side.
Whether the full faith and credibility clause requires a nation like New York to grant a civil sentence of a nation like Texas depends on whether the judgment in question is essentially punishment, despite the fact that it arises from a civil lawsuit rather than a criminal prosecution. As I argue in my new paper, civil judgments arising from violations of the state’s abortion ban should be understood as prison judgments, as they not only provide an identifiable individual quest to prove personal benefits, but also seek to prohibit and punish the defendant’s actions in order to protect the health and morality of the public. This reasoning could give states with shield laws more protection against state overreach with abortion bans.
Most states that allow abortions have adopted Shield Acts to protect reproductive care providers. Similar to the Immigration Sanctuary Act, New York’s Reproductive Health Care Shield Act prohibits state and local government employees from working with out-of-state stakeholders’ investigation or enforcement efforts. Several states, including New York, explicitly apply these protections to activities that providers carry out via telehealth, even if patients are out of state, while physically present within their state.
If an anti-abortion plaintiff tries to tame a civil judgment issued by a court in a state that prohibits or restricts abortion, the court clerk or judge must determine whether they are present. Prohibited Because they accept judgment based on the Shield Act of their hometown, Required To recognize it under full faith and trust clauses, or It is permitted Refuses recognition if there is no command in some way. If applicable, the full faith and credit clause and its implementation law prevails the state’s shield law. Without applicable federal commands, the clerk or judge may have the discretion to refuse recognition under existing doctrines, even in the absence of the On-Point Shield Act.
If default decisions provided by courts in prohibited states can be enforced outside the realm using mechanical recognition rules, they can be a highly effective tool to eliminate the need for more complicated legal manipulation by abortion opponents. This approach stymie the efforts of state officials to fulfill their democratic mission to protect reproductive health providers.
Texas vs BrookIt was filed for Ulster County in July at the Supreme Court of New York, Texas vs. Carpentera default ruling issued in February by Collins County District Court, Texas, against New York physician Maggie Carpenter. The Texas court order bans carpenters from “prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” and orders Texas to pay civil fines and fees in excess of $100,000 as a punishment for violating the Texas abortion ban. Paxton then attempted to arrest Texas sentence in New York by filing a motion seeking summary judgment in place of a complaint in the county where Carpenter’s medical practice is located. Citing the New York Shield Act, the county clerk refused to submit Paxton twice. Paxton then filed a petition in Ulster County, citing full faith and credit clauses, and asked the court to order a summary judgment issued by the New York State Court against the carpenter.
The Texas debate is central to how states relate to each other within our federal system. The Supreme Court balances the constitutional principles of national sovereignty by determining that state courts must generally recognize the civil judgments of sister states, but does not need to recognize prison judgments in accordance with the principles of anti-enforcement borrowed from international law. Allowing a state to enforce the law beyond its own boundaries would violate the principle that states are “equal sovereigns within the federal system.” As Judge Robert Jackson explained in the 1945 Legal Review Clause, when the party asks the court to enforce a judgment issued by a sister state under the prison sentence rules, the court’s courts are “permission to investigate the cause of the case that has been merged with the judgment.”
The most detailed treatment of the Supreme Court of Prison Judgment Rules is published in Huntington v. AtrilIt was decided in 1892. The court explained in Dictah that “criminal law” is not synonymous with criminal law. Criminal law may also include civil laws with criminal purposes for the purposes of determining the full faith and credit obligation of a court’s state. According to Huntington“The “test of whether the law is punished in a strict and primary sense” depends on “whether the wrong thing is being asked to be saved.” “The violations and violations of public rights and obligations that affect the entire community are considered a community.”
While there are large variations in criminal judgments, ignoring sister state judgments is not merely because respecting them contradicts the court’s public policy choices. The Supreme Court emphasized that “exceptions to public policy” are not found in a ruling of full faith and credibility.” Fauntleroyv. LumIt is beneficial to have emerged from the last century of interstate cultural wars over gambling in 1908. The court overturned the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision to reject Mississippi’s decision and refused to recover to a private plaintiff seeking a Missouri ruling ordering defendants to pay civilian gambling liabilities against the defendant’s objection that the deal was made in Mississippi and was illegal under the state’s state gambling ban. Mississippi’s (failed) resistance was based not on the idea that Missouri’s decision was a punishment, but on the idea that it would enforce Missouri’s decision to violate Mississippi’s public policy to ban Mississippi’s gambling.
Rather than relying on “public policy,” the Supreme Court’s explanation of criminal judgment rules derives a line between the clear public punitive purpose of some civil proceedings and the purpose of private relief for others. in Huntingtonthe Supreme Court has assumed that state laws that impose civil liability could be one of the “semi-criminal” laws “cannot be enforced in a foreign or state” if the maintenance of a case under such law “will (ing) control (instruct) the punishment imposed on criminals against the state.” Ultimately, the court found that the New York law in question was “a civil remedy in a private lawsuit only with creditors, and a relief for him as measured by the amount of his debt.” The joint and past fascinating laws that were the basis for the New York ruling were intended to provide “individually” remedies rather than providing justice that “incorrectly to the public.” The court therefore held that the full faith and credibility clause required the Maryland court to recognize and enforce the New York decision.
As other jurists have pointed out, the state Supreme Court occasionally relies on criminal judgment rules to refuse to enforce sister state laws or civil cases. However, these events are rare because states are usually very lenient in realizing that they choose their sister state’s judgment based on comity. As a result, judges in shielding states have little direct on-point precedent that draws a line between federal obligations and non-comprehensive judgments that cause criminal judgments that do not.
My paper argues that litigators and judges should look to precedents in other areas of law. Parent’s country Doctrine and federal customary law was developed to resolve public nuisance cases on interstate highways and interpret the meaning of designating a specific civil case as a punishment for violations of “public rights and obligations” in the context of criminal judgment rules. Precedents involving horizontal federalism on relations between state governments coincides with the analysis of courts’ criminal judgment rules and reinforce the reinforcement of recent cases. Prevent such harm in the future.
If a civil judgment in a Prohibited State Court punishes an individual in the name of protecting the health and life of a future pregnant patient and his embryo or fetus, the Shield State court may find, in this situation, a criminal judgment and therefore exempt from the obligation of full faith and belief. therefore, Texas vs. Carpenterprohibiting future conduct and pronounce civil penalties paid to the state under the ban on abortion and violation of the licensing laws is not subject to enforcement.
If the judgment is based on the application of professional care, the award of damages to an individual injured by the defendant’s negligence or professional misconduct is entitled to full faith and credibility, but not so if standard care applied by courts in the prohibited states is derived solely from state laws that punish the state laws to protect the health and morality of a large population. Similarly, a judgment of unlawful death awarded to the complaint of a relative suffering on behalf of an embryo or fetus could be considered a punishment rather than a remedy if the court’s court finds it is based solely on the criminalization of the state, rather than a general standard of care for the professional standards of care that is commonly applied.
Of course, even if Shield State successfully rejects and enforces its ban state’s decision, the BAN state could place a significant burden on out-of-state health care providers with the relief package granted within the borders. Nevertheless, further depicting the scope of prison sentence rules could reduce the calm effect of the threat of cross-border enforcement of the prohibited country and clarify the nature of comparable sovereignty among sister states.
Lindsay Wiley is a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and a faculty member of his health law and policy programs.
Suggested Quote: Lindsay Wiley, New York courts should reject Texas’ attempts to enforce abortion bans across that bordersᴛᴀᴛᴇcᴏᴜʀᴛrᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Sep. 29, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/new-york-courts-heject-hekteptempt-nforce-it
