A judge on Friday tossed a Texas lawsuit seeking to hold a clerk accountable for not enforcing a ruling from the Lone Star State against an abortion provider from the Empire State.
Justice David M. Gandin, who sits on the county Supreme Court, ruled in favor of Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck who refused to file a $113,000 Texas judgement against Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) attempted to send the judgment to Bruck’s office twice in addition to a court summons. The clerk denied both of Paxton’s requests, citing New York’s shield law, which protects abortion providers from facing legal penalties and extradition orders.
“Dr. Carpenter’s conduct falls squarely within the definition of ‘legally protected health activity,’” Gandin wrote in his decision, calling Carpenter’s work “the precise type of conduct (the shield law) was designed to protect,” according to The Times-Union.
The county clerk called the judge’s decision “refreshing.”
“The decision confirms what we had assumed all along — that we should not have filed the Texas judgment,” Bruck said in an interview Friday with The Times-Union. “The law seemed obvious to us, but since it was untested, certain people had questions about it.”
The latest decision comes after New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in September moved to intervene in the Texas lawsuit to defend the state’s shield law.
