A Galveston County man has filed a lawsuit towards a California physician he accuses of offering abortion-inducing drugs to his associate, leveraging for the primary time a brand new Texas regulation that permits non-public residents to sue abortion suppliers for as much as $100,000.
In July, Jerry Rodriguez filed the unique lawsuit that accused Dr. Remy Coeytaux of offering his girlfriend with abortion drugs on the path of her ex-husband.
The lawsuit alleges the girl’s ex-husband ordered the abortion drugs from Coeytaux. Subsequently, Rodriguez’ girlfriend took the drugs and terminated a being pregnant on Sept.19, 2024 and one other being pregnant in January 2025. Rodriguez claims within the lawsuit that he was the daddy in these pregnancies.
On Sunday, Rodriguez, by his lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, who helped design Texas’ abortion ban, up to date the lawsuit, largely stating the identical allegations towards Coeytaux. Nonetheless, this time, Mitchell included Home Invoice 7 as a further device to compel Coeytaux to pay $75,000 in minimal damages, plus different charges, Rodriguez is asking for and to cease prescribing or offering abortion-inducing medication in Texas.
HB 7, which went into impact Dec. 4, permits non-public residents to sue anybody who manufactures, distributes, mails or offers abortion treatment to or from Texas.
The invoice’s opponents have referred to as it a “bounty hunter regulation” as a result of profitable plaintiffs can be awarded at the very least $100,000 in damages. If the plaintiff will not be instantly associated to the fetus, they might solely be entitled to 10% and must give the remaining cash to a charity of their selecting. Ladies taking abortion drugs wouldn’t be eligible to be sued beneath the invoice, nor would ladies who take them after miscarriages.
“If discovery reveals that Coeytaux has mailed, transported, delivered, prescribed, or offered any abortion-inducing drug to any particular person or location in Texas since HB 7 took impact on December 4, 2025, then Mr. Rodriguez will search to get better at the very least $100,000.00 for every of these statutory violations,” Mitchell stated within the up to date lawsuit.
The Heart for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Coeytaux, launched an announcement condemning the lawsuit as a strategic assault to additional implement laws that undermine the alternatives ladies make about their physique.
“This regulation goes towards all the things Texans worth. It’s anti-freedom, anti-privacy, and anti-family,” stated Marc Hearron, affiliate litigation director on the Heart for Reproductive Rights, within the information launch. “However these lawmakers are relentless of their makes an attempt to scare docs and sufferers from prescribing and accessing abortion drugs – precisely as a result of they’re so secure, efficient, and extensively used throughout america.”
The usage of abortion drugs have skyrocketed after the overturn of Roe V. Wade.
There have been estimates that as many as 19,000 orders for abortion drugs from Texans have been positioned after Texas’ preliminary abortion ban was enacted. After Texas banned abortion, many turned to on-line pharmacies and out-of-state suppliers to acquire treatment to terminate their pregnancies regardless of the bans.
Texas is amongst states main on the crackdown of abortion drugs. In December, Texas joined Florida in suing the Federal Drug Administration over the company’s approval of mifepristone, a drug generally prescribed to terminate pregnancies.
Darcy Caballero, authorities relations & political director of Deliberate Guardian Texas Votes, stated ladies usually use these abortion-inducing drugs as a result of they’re pregnant with fetuses which have deadly diagnoses.
“They’re now having to face an actual tough alternative of both going by with a labor that they know will not be viable or have to depart the state to get the care that they want as a result of in any other case the state goes to make it hostile for anybody to assist them,” Caballero stated.
The most recent lawsuit raises comparable authorized questions which have popped up in different Texas lawsuits towards out-of-state abortion tablet suppliers, specifically associated as to whether their state’s protect legal guidelines can defend them from Texas’ challenges.
Texas has sued two out-of-state abortion tablet suppliers in New York and Delaware for violating Texas’ abortion legal guidelines, however New York and Delaware have protect legal guidelines which defend medical suppliers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions. Whereas the Delaware lawsuit was filed final week, a New York decide dismissed Texas’ case in October.
California has comparable protect legal guidelines, which might additionally defend Coeytaux, authorized consultants have stated.
California’s protect regulation might additionally permit Coeytaux to countersue Rodriguez, however in Sunday’s replace, Mitchell identified language that Texas lawmakers wrote into HB 7 that stops such counteractions.
The lawsuit additionally alleges Coeytaux is in violation of the Comstock Act, an 18th Century anti-obscenity regulation. The Comstock Act has not been enforced for greater than 100 years, with some authorized consultants arguing it’s totally unenforceable consequently, whereas others, together with Mitchell, argue it may be used to federally criminalize mailing abortion drugs.
Mitchell and HB 7’s writer Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, didn’t return requests for remark.
This text first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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