Abortion

Texas Judge Teaches Anti-Choice Lawyer A Lesson About Law

Judge Sparks is still fending off requests from anti-choice advocates wanting to testify in the Texas ultrasound case.

Texas Judge Sam Sparks has already made it clear that he has no interest in turning the mandatory ultrasound case into a soapbox platform for abortion arguments.

But that’s not stopping anti-choice activists from trying.

The latest attempt — a lawyer from an anti-choice group representing “Texas women hurt by abortion.”  Sparks, unsurprisingly, denies the request, and knocks the lawyer down a few pegs as well.

Via the Austin Chronicle:

This time, however, it seems Sparks is getting a bit perturbed. In rejecting the latest attempt to file a friend-of-the-court brief, written by anti-abortion lawyer Allan Parker, with the the Justice Foundation, on “behalf of 317 Texas Women Hurt By Abortion,” Sparks did not mince words – especially in responding to Parker’s filing of a host of exhibits, including the picture of a “first-trimester aborted child,” according to a list of the appendices, which Sparks has placed under seal.

“The Court has already turned down two extremely tempting offers to transform this case from a boring old federal lawsuit into an exciting, politically-charged media circus,” he wrote. “As any competent attorney could have predicted, the Court declines this latest invitation as well.”

Moreover, Sparks continued that he concludes Parker is not competent: “the Court is forced to conclude Allan E. Parker, Jr., the attorney whose signature appears on this motion, is anything but competent,” he wrote. “A competent attorney would not have filed this motion in the first place; if he did, he certainly would not have attached exhibits that are both highly prejudicial and legally irrelevant; and if he foolishly did both things, he surely would not be so unprofessional as to file such exhibits unsealed.”

Alas, that’s exactly what Parker did.

Maybe that will finally bring an end to the “friend of the court” filings.