Page:Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson.pdf/18

Rh charged with enforcing “other laws that regulate … abortion.” Consider, for example, Texas Occupational Code §164.055, titled “Prohibited Acts Regarding Abortion.” That provision states that the Texas Medical Board “shall take an appropriate disciplinary action against a physician who violates … Chapter 171, Health and Safety Code,” a part of Texas statutory law that includes S. B. 8. Accordingly, it appears Texas law imposes on the licensing-official defendants a duty to enforce a law that “regulate[s] or prohibit[s] abortion,” a duty expressly preserved by S. B. 8’s saving clause. Of course, Texas courts and not this one are the final arbiters of the meaning of state statutory directions. See Railroad Comm’n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496, 500 (1941). But at least based on the limited arguments put to us at this stage of the litigation, it appears that the licensing defendants do have authority to enforce S. B. 8.

In the face of this conclusion, advances an alternative argument. He stresses that to maintain a suit consistent with this Court’s Ex parte Young and Article III precedents, “it is not enough that petitioners ‘feel inhibited’ ” or “ ‘chill[ed]’ ” by the abstract possibility of an enforcement action against them. Post, at 6–7. Rather, they must show at least a credible threat of such an action against them. Post, at 7. Again, we agree with these observations in principle and disagree only on their application