In the GOP’s New Surveillance State, Everyone’s a Snitch

"The fact that lawmakers have repeatedly chosen to include this mechanism anyway points to vigilante laws’ more sweeping purpose. In a forthcoming Cornell Law Review article, Michaels and Noll argue that by deputizing the faithful of the conservative movement to attack the communities they dislike, these laws not only control and marginalize, but also realign power in American society. Rather than protect minority rights, the courts become a tool of mob rule, the sheltering protection of the law shrinks, and the social fabric of democracy gives way to surveillance and fear. These laws “draw upon and reinforce anti-democratic and authoritarian tendencies that are central to Trumpist politics,” they write.

Michaels and Noll see vigilante enforcement laws as an extension of America’s anti-democratic traditions of slavery and Jim Crow. The closest historical corollary to SB8, they argue, is the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Under the law, local authorities in northern states were deputized to arrest enslaved people (or anyone accused of being one) and bring them before local magistrates; ordinary citizens could be called upon to aid in their capture and would be fined should they refuse. The act dangled financial incentives: Magistrates earned $10 for each person they deemed a runaway but only $5 for those they set free. Authorities who captured a fugitive received a bonus, while any person caught aiding a suspected fugitive faced six months in prison and a $1000 fine. In doing all of this, the Fugitive Slave law turned the country into a surveillance state where both enslaved people and anyone who wanted to help them were in danger of being turned in by their fellow citizens.

The comparison to today’s growing body of vigilante enforcement laws is eerie. Like the Fugitive Slave Law, SB8 ignores state borders. Anyone anywhere can sue those who aid an illegal abortion in Texas. Proceedings in court are stacked in favor of the vigilante: whoever they accuse must prove that they didn’t break the law, rather than the accuser proving that the law was violated, as is typical in the US legal system. Like the Fugitive Slave Law, SB8 uses a bounty system to incentivize enforcement: vigilantes are promised a minimum of $10,000 in damages for each abortion they sue over, as well as attorney’s fees paid by the accused. In Missouri, a proposed law would take this analogy even further by bringing liability to anyone who helped a Missouri resident obtain an abortion outside of Missouri. As in 1850, the carrot is money and the stick is fear. For more than a century after the Fugitive Slave Law, vigilantes enforced racial hierarchy through violence while lawmakers looked the other way. With rules like SB8, vigilantes are now again officially welcomed in the letter of the law.

Their legacy of brutality is also resurgent. "

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In the GOP’s New Surveillance State, Everyone’s a Snitch – Mother Jones