On Thursday, Sept. 9, the Justice Department sued Texas over its six-week abortion law. This comes as the Biden administration’s first step to combat one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the United States.

The Supreme Court rejected a case regarding a lawsuit against the Texas law on Sept. 1, allowing Texas to fully commence its implementation. 

Texas’s ban declares that no woman can receive an abortion once fetal cardiac activity is discoverable (which is before most women know they are pregnant) and does not provide exceptions for cases of incest or rape. Additionally, the law places enforcement privileges in the hands of Texans, meaning that citizens can file lawsuits against any clinic that performed an abortion after six weeks or any individual that assisted a woman’s attainment of an abortion after six weeks.

The lawsuit states that the new law is unconstitutional and an obstruction of a woman’s right to reproductive health care. The department’s objective is to block any enforcement of the law within Texas before other states adopt a similar policy.