Whether a federal court can enjoin a state judge from overseeing a state civil trial based on state law is a complicated legal question. States themselves are immune from suit under the 11th Amendment, but in 1908 the Supreme Court held that a plaintiff could get an injunction against an enforcing state officer when that person was violating the U.S. Constitution. The question for the Supreme Court was: Are state judges the enforcers of the Texas law?

This legal ambiguity was precisely the point, by the way. After decades of passing myriad state abortion restrictions only to have them enjoined by federal courts and never go into effect, the anti-abortion movement’s legal wing came up with this idea as a way to get around the problem. By their way of thinking, if there were no one to enjoin, then they could get past that first hurdle — further than any so-called heartbeat bill had ever made it. It was a hypothetical a law student might expect on their constitutional law final exam — and the Texas legislature was happy to go along because for years Republican politicians have been able to signal their anti-abortion bona fides by signing onto these types of bills without any real concern that the law would actually go into effect. They are now the dogs that caught the car, which I think explains why so few Republicans have been out in the media cheering on the result.