California doctors or pharmacists who prescribe or dispense abortion pills to out-of-state patients would have new legal protections under a provision recently proposed in the Golden State.

The new bill, SB345, would prevent healthcare providers who are legally performing their jobs in California from facing prosecution in another state or being extradited — a growing concern as more states move to criminalize abortion and other reproductive healthcare.

The proposal would protect against criminal or civil actions taken against health providers, and also allow those providers to sue someone trying to prevent such abortion care.

State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) filed the bill Friday after hearing from doctors and other providers that they were worried about potential legal ramifications for providing abortion pills to patients in states such as Texas and Idaho — where abortion and abortion pills are criminalized or banned. She said many California doctors continued to work with patients who might have relocated to attend college, fulfill a work rotation or even moved permanently.

“I’m trying to protect our healthcare practitioners so they can do their jobs, without fear," Skinner said Friday. She said the bill, if passed, would "protect those practitioners in California who are acting in California and following California’s laws.”

Prem
@prem_thakker

Left: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz after signing a law that guarantees free breakfast and lunch to all public school students

Right: Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders after signing a law that makes child labor easier

Jake Charles
@JacobDCharles

🚨 Acting on a "a highly expedited schedule," DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit's ruling in US v. Rahimi that invalidated the federal law barring those under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns. 🚨

Petition: https://bit.ly/42nZy36

If the Court does agree to hear the case, which seems like a real possibility, we could have our first post-Bruen test of how aligned the conservative justices are over the scope of the 2nd Am & the breadth of Bruen's test.

This is the case where the judges on the 5th Circuit declared that our ancestors would have considered it unthinkable to ban guns from domestic abusers--& therefore modern regulations doing so are unconstitutional. Here's my earlier threads on the case. 👇

🚨 The 5th Circuit just said govt cant temporarily disarm a person found to pose a threat to another & subject to a DV restraining order.

Jake Charles
@JacobDCharles

I wrote this @thehill op-ed on the problems with the 5th Circuit's analysis--that it was problematic not only for how it applied Bruen's test, but for what it exposed about Bruen's test.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3859203-the-founders-didnt-disarm-domestic-abusers-does-that-mean-we-cant/

A national get-out-the-vote group and the N.A.A.C.P. on Thursday challenged a Florida law that bars the use of digital signatures on voter registration forms, bringing a federal lawsuit against the state similar to ones pending in Texas and Georgia.

The legal action targets what is known as Florida’s “wet signature” requirement, which mandates that anyone registering to vote who is not listed in the state’s driver’s license database sign their application with a pen.

Florida has about 2.3 million people who are of voting age but do not have driver’s licenses, according to Vote.org, part of a group of plaintiffs in the lawsuit that also includes the the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans.

The plaintiffs contend that the rule creates a particular hardship for people of color, older residents and those with lower incomes who might not readily have access to a printer — and that it puts the onus on them to return applications to the state.

Last year, a federal judge in Texas sided with Vote.org in a 2021 lawsuit over that state’s wet signature requirement. The judge ruled that the mandate violated the federal Civil Rights Act, a decision that the state is appealing.

Vote.org filed a similar lawsuit last year against Georgia, which the state unsuccessfully sought to have dismissed.

I grew up in a home where children were not to speak unless spoken to, feelings were not discussed and life was a ticker tape of “don’t” because que pensaran los vecinos?

Given this background, I was ill-prepared for my first menstruation. It came on the Fourth of July when I was 10. I shyly asked my mother for help, and she gave me a pad without instructions or comment. I thought this was an irksome interruption to the holiday, but had heard of periods and was relieved that mine was now over and done with. Imagine my surprise when, in August, it returned.

Later that month, I came home from school to “The Period Book” on my bed. There was no talk, just the book. That night, I stayed up reading it with a flashlight under my covers and I remember the rage I felt at the realization that this thing was called “menstruation” and it was going to happen every month. For decades!

But I also remember the exhilaration I felt poring over the pages to learn more about my body. It felt like I was Sonic the Hedgehog and every new word — estrogen, areola, cervix — was a row of gold rings. From the fiefdom of my parent’s home, this was the first time I felt power. I became keenly aware that knowledge was currency in the economy of self-determination.

Last week, Florida lawmakers filed a dystopian bill that would ban abortions after six weeks and threatens to steal that currency from us. House Bill 7 has its first hearing Thursday, Healthcare Regulation subcommittee.

Such bills demean the personhood of women, non-binary and transgender people to make our own decisions about our bodies, lives and futures. This bill is particularly heinous not only because politicians should not have a place in our personal medical decisions, but because it appropriates $25 million more in funding fake anti-abortion clinics.

At Wednesday’s hearing over the fate of mifepristone, conservative lawyers repeatedly insisted that the FDA wrongly greenlighted the abortion medication in 2000 through an “accelerated approval” process. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—the far-right Trump nominee whom the plaintiffs hand-picked to oversee the case—evidently agreed: According to reports from the courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, Kacsmaryk continually pressed government lawyers to defend the FDA’s “accelerated approval” of mifepristone nearly 23 years ago. In doing so, he implied that the agency’s allegedly rushed decision might justify pulling the drug from the market today.

This entire argument is built upon a lie. The FDA did not fast-track mifepristone in 2000. Rather, the agency took more than four years to greenlight the drug, doing so only after extensive (and arguably superfluous) examination of its (very minor) risks. When the FDA did finally approve the use of mifepristone, after an unusually thorough review, however, it imposed heightened restrictions on its distribution. It was these extra barriers to mifepristone access that were set up through a process known as accelerated approval. The plaintiffs here exploit confusion about these procedural details to peddle the false narrative that the agency recklessly hastened review of mifepristone. It is an extremely ominous sign that Kacsmaryk appeared to agree with their false history.

These plaintiffs, a group of anti-abortion doctors represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, did not have to work very hard to devise this story: A great deal of media coverage, and even some medical literature, states in passing that mifepristone received accelerated approval because it was ultimately greenlighted under an FDA regulation called Subpart H. The confusion arises from a misunderstanding about how, exactly, the FDA relied on this regulation back in 2000. It is worth recounting the actual events that led up to that point.

In 1996 mifepristone’s “sponsor,” an organization called the Population Council, submitted an application for the drug to the FDA. The agency spent the next four years soliciting voluminous amounts of data, including multiple clinical studies, from the sponsor. (Ironically, you can find all this information in a 505-page appendix submitted by Alliance Defending Freedom, much of which contradicts the group’s own legal and factual claims.) Eventually, Population Council’s data convinced the FDA that mifepristone was both safe and effective enough for use through 49 days’ gestation. After completing review of all data, including clinical trials, the FDA issued an approval letter in the ordinary manner. In keeping with its ultra-cautious approach to the drug, though, the agency decided to continue studying the drug post-approval and to enact additional burdens on its distribution. Only then was Subpart H invoked—at the time, federal law allowed the FDA to impose these rules through Subpart H.

It is true that Subpart H regulations are commonly referred to as “accelerated approval.” It is also true that the FDA often used this process to fast-track drugs for HIV, cancer, and other lethal conditions in desperate need of new treatments. But it is not true that Subpart H existed only to expedite review.