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How abortion’s legal landscape post-Roe is causing fear and confusion
VOL. 12,
Ex-LADWP commissioner faces disciplinary charge in billing scandal
By Nicole Lewis and Aala Abdullahi, The Marshall Project via Stacker
By City News Service
F
or years before the Supreme Court upended Roe v. Wade, the landmark precedent protecting abortion access, a network of conservative Christians was slowly and methodically stacking the courts through political means. “What Trump and his Republican allies had done was to change the country by leveraging political force to conquer the courts,” Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer wrote in their recent recounting of the network’s maneuvering for The New York Times Magazine. “Their policy arms churned out legal arguments and medical studies. Their lawyers argued their cases, and their judges ruled on them,” Dias and Lerer explained. This strategy helps to decode the ever-changing post-Roe legal landscape. With Roe out of the way, and with many courts stacked in their favor, conservative state legislatures have continued to pass increasingly restrictive and punitive abortion laws. At least 14 states have banned abortion with limited exceptions since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ended Roe in 2022. Another seven states have banned the procedure before 18 weeks, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that advocates for reproductive rights, including abortion. Nearly two years after Dobbs, the legality of abortion in the United States is still being debated in court. A total of 40 cases have challenged abortion bans in 23 states as of January, according to the think tank Brennan Center for Justice The Marshall Project has been tracking the ripple effects of these laws
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Bill Funderburk. | Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Department | Photo courtesy of Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Stacker
and lawsuits, particularly in Southern states in which most pregnancy-related prosecutions are concentrated. We wanted to understand how reproductive rights lawyers, advocacy groups, abortion providers and their patients are responding to this new legal reality and what new risks they face. Over the course of several weeks, we heard from seven organizations in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. The end of Roe ushered in a climate of fear and confusion, many of the organizations told us. New laws and novel prosecutorial tactics have raised critical questions about free speech, interstate travel, telemedicine and more. All while the reproductive rights legal community has scrambled to keep up. Here are other important takeaways: Abortion laws are a free-speech issue A set of lawsuits in Alabama, where abortion is
banned, illustrates the new dynamics. State Attorney General Steve Marshall threatened to prosecute anyone helping residents get an out-of-state abortion. The threat extends to organizations, such as Yellowhammer Fund, that provide information about where to go and what to consider when seeking an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal. Yellowhammer Fund and another organization filed suit, questioning the constitutionality of the state ban. Such prosecutions would violate Alabamians’ right to free speech, they argued. Marshall “has threatened to criminalize in a way calculated to chill the speech, expressive conduct, and association of helpers, and to isolate pregnant people — a known tactic of abusers — to make it more difficult for them to travel See Abortion Page 28
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and access needed medical care,” lawyers for the case explained in their initial complaint. Marshall moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the state could prosecute people using its anti-conspiracy laws. But earlier this month a federal judge ruled the lawsuit can proceed. Many of the reproductive rights organizations we spoke to across the South said they’ve also struggled with what information they can legally share. Most lawyers won’t give them guidance, one group told us, saying the laws are too untested and too risky. Many new laws have little legal precedent Many of the recent state laws take aim at people helping someone seeking an abortion or those looking to leave a state where abortion is illegal. Several states have focused on aid to minors.
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former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power board member linked to an alleged bribery scheme was facing State Bar of California disciplinary charges Wednesday for allegedly soliciting and receiving more than $31,000 in free legal services from an attorney connected to the 2017 LADWP billing scandal. The State Bar alleges that in the summer of 2017, attorney Bill Funderburk was set to vote as a DWP Board Commissioner on a $30 million no-bid contract for a business created by lawyer Paul Paradis — a cooperating witness in the billing scandal — to provide consulting services to the utility. At the time, Paradis was covertly assisting in the settlement of a class action suit brought on behalf of DWP ratepayers against the city of Los Angeles following the disastrous rollout of a new DWP billing system overseen by PricewaterhouseCoopers, in which some ratepayers were drastically overcharged, while others were undercharged. Paradis and attorney Paul Kiesel were working for the city in its litigation against PWC at the same time Paradis was working covertly with class counsel to arrange a settlement of the ratepayer class action on terms favorable to the city. According to the disciplinary notice, Funderburk was initially supportive of granting the contract to the business. In the weeks before the DWP’s June 2017 vote, however, Funderburk let the utility’s officials know that he was reluctant to support the contract. Around the same time, Funderburk began sending text messages to Paradis to request and receive free legal services valued at more than $31,000 for an unrelated litigation See Billing scandal Page 28