New York Attorney General Letitia James is intervening in a landmark legal battle involving a New York physician who allegedly prescribed abortion pills via telehealth to a patient in Collin County, Texas.
On Monday, James sent a letter to a state Supreme Court judge in Ulster County, New York, invoking her authority to defend the state’s “shield law,” which prohibits state officials from cooperating with investigations into New York providers offering out-of-state abortions. The letter responds to a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The action is a major development in the legal battle — one of the first challenges to New York’s shield law since it was enacted in 2023. It comes amid a growing divide in access to reproductive care across the country after the fall of Roe v. Wade, with some states deepening their defense of abortion rights and others passing new laws that restrict access.
“I am stepping in to defend the integrity of our laws and our courts against this blatant overreach,” James said Monday in a statement shared with NBC News ahead of James’ joining the lawsuit. “Texas has no authority in New York, and no power to impose its cruel abortion ban here.”
The dispute dates to December, when Paxton sued New York physician Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter for allegedly prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol — the two pills involved in a medication abortion — to a Texas patient. Paxton claimed the doctor violated Texas’ near-total abortion ban as well as a state law that requires physicians who perform abortions in Texas to have a Texas medical license.
Carpenter is one of the founders of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an advocacy group that supports telemedicine abortion.
A Texas judge in February ordered Carpenter to pay more than $100,000 in penalties, but a county clerk in Ulster County, New York, twice refused to enforce the fine, citing New York’s shield law as justification.
In response, Paxton sued the county clerk in July and claimed that New York’s shield law was unconstitutional. That cleared the way for James, who had been critical of Paxton’s actions, to formally step in to defend New York’s law.
Her office is now joining the lawsuit against the county clerk and will help argue the case before the Ulster County Supreme Court.
James’ office said she plans to file written arguments by Sept. 19. She will claim that Texas cannot use New York’s courts to enforce its abortion laws, and that New York has the legal right to protect its residents and health care providers.
The same doctor at the heart of the Texas lawsuits was indicted by a Louisiana grand jury in January for allegedly sending abortion pills to a teenager there. Dispensing abortion pills with the intent to cause an abortion is considered a felony in Louisiana.
The case was the first known instance of criminal charges filed against a doctor for allegedly sending abortion pills to another state after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a warrant in February for the doctor to be extradited to his state, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul denied the request, again pointing to New York’s shield law.
“We’re not going to stop trying to extradite her and prosecute her for the crimes that she’s committing in our state,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said of Carpenter during testimony in favor of an anti-abortion bill in May.
The outcomes in Texas and Louisiana could set a precedent for how courts nationwide interpret shield laws amid growing legal challenges against them. Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C., have shield laws that offer some degree of protection for reproductive care, according to UCLA Law’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy. And eight states — including New York, California, Colorado and Maine — have passed laws that specifically protect providers from being sued for prescribing abortion pills virtually to people from other states.
In July, 16 Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress asking it to take action to pre-empt abortion shield laws. The Texas state Senate also passed a bill last week that would allow private residents to sue out-of-state providers who give abortion pills to people in their state. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign the bill into law any day.
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