Texas Holdup

A conservative courts system and tactics like "judge-shopping" have made Texas a national clearinghouse for policies that imperil pregnant people.

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Every year, per a 2018 analysis, working mothers stand to lose an average $16,000 in wages compared to fathers. The state of Texas, meanwhile, claims it stands to lose an annual $5,200 in legal costs under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a new federal law that requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant people.

In a lawsuit last year, Texas sought to block the PWFA, claiming injury on the basis of that four-figure expense. A conservative judge sided with the state on Tuesday, ruling the pregnancy protection law unenforceable in Texas.

Texas courts have become a clearing house for rulings that make pregnancy more dangerous, and abortion nearly impossible. The Tuesday ruling found that, in passing the PWFA, Congress had violated quorum rules by allowing proxy voting (a pandemic-era practice that lets lawmakers vote on legislation even if they are not physically present in the Capitol). It’s tempting to write off Texas courts as a legal outlier; the state’s court system is structured in a way that enables judge-shopping, a practice by which plaintiffs can seek out maximally conservative judges in an already conservative state.

But Texas rulings frequently have ripple effects beyond state borders, giving the state’s most anti-choice voices an outsized influence on parents and reproductive rights nationally.