Cities and Counties as Post-Roe Bulwarks: Who Are the "People's Elected Representatives"?

Recent headlines have been dominated by the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. A key sentence in that draft opinion says: “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

In Texas, recent court battles about three topics --county election procedures, mask mandates, and SB8-- showed that “the people’s elected representatives” includes far more than the Legislature. There are not just two levels to our government (state and federal) but also a third—local authorities. This episode considers how the role and powers of those, additional, elected representatives may affect the availability of abortion in a post-Roe world.