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A federal lawsuit filed in Texas against a Sebastopol doctor earlier this year is hoping to test the limits of legal protections for abortion providers.

The case could be a test for California's "shield laws", and a bellwether for abortion law nationwide.

Texas stoked controversy in the national fight over abortion in 2021, when the state's legislature passed SB-8, the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the nation at the time.

Texas' law, which passed even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, is enforced through private lawsuits.

Individuals can sue doctors or other private citizens who help provide abortion care for no less than $10,000.

The so-called "bounty hunter" abortion bill is how Sebastopol-based doctor, Remy Coeytaux found himself at the center of lawsuit in federal court in Galveston, for mailing mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortions, to a woman in Texas.

"The point of this lawsuit is to try to invoke federal law to try to end access to medication abortion in states like Texas and in other banned states," said Marc Hearron, one of the lead attorneys at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Dr. Coeytaux declined to comment on the case, and Coeytaux's legal team, including Hearron and lawyers at the Center for Reproductive Rights, are tight lipped about the active federal lawsuit.

The case was filed by a Galveston, Texas man, Jerry Rodriguez, "on behalf of a class of all current and future fathers of unborn children in the United States."

The lawsuit alleges that by mailing mifepristone to Rodriguez's pregnant girlfriend, Dr. Coeytaux “'intentionally and knowingly caused the death' of Mr. Rodriguez's unborn child."

Rodriguez's attorney Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general, has been influential in crafting anti-abortion legislation, including Texas' "bounty hunter" abortion bill.

Hearron said the lawsuit more broadly speaks to the current landscape around abortion in the United States.

"Medication abortion is a lifeline for people in banned state,s and states with severe abortion restrictions," Hearron said. "Because [for] people who cannot leave those states, medication abortion has been a way that they've been able to access care. And it's the reason that we've seen that the number of abortions post-Dobbs has actually increased."

"Medication abortion is now over 60% of the abortions that take place in the United States, [they] are through medication abortion," Hearron said.

The medication abortion allegedly used in the lawsuit was purchased through the group Aid Access.

That's an online medical resource group founded in 2018 to "create social justice and improve the health status and human rights of women who do not have the possibility of accessing local abortion services."

Women can receive an online consultation for medication abortion services and get mailed mifespristone from Aid Access for $150.

Aid Access has been the target of legal efforts to stop their work, and Hearron, with some skepticism, said cases like the one filed by Rodriguez and Mitchell could test California "shield laws" protecting abortion care providers.

"If he doesn't win his case in Texas in the first place, then...there's no clash with the shield laws at all," Hearron said "I mentioned that there [have] been a series of these wrongful death cases that this lawyer has filed. He hasn't won any of them yet...so, you know, will he be able to win this one? There's a lot of hurdles for him."

The current lawsuit in federal court in Texas isn't the first time Sebastopol's Dr. Coeytaux has been targeted for shipping abortion medication.

In August, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a cease and desist letter to Coeytaux, and in September, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill issued a warrant for Coeytaux's arrest for shipping mifespristone to a Louisiana resident in 2023.

While the current case against Coeytaux in Texas is in federal court, Hearron said it'll take a long time for the case to become a precedent setting showdown before the Supreme Court, if it even makes it that far.

The next hearing in the case of Rodriguez v. Coeytaux is scheduled for February 11th, 2026.