Minnesota town drops Texas-style anti-abortion lawsuit plan

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota town has backed away from a proposal to let people sue abortion providers, including organizations that provide abortion drugs by mail, after the state’s attorney general warned that the plan was unconstitutional.

The retiring state lawmaker behind the proposal said Monday that he’s not giving up despite the unanimous vote by the Prinsburg City Council on Friday to drop the idea. It's similar to a Texas law that deputizes private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion.

Republican Rep. Tim Miller told The Associated Press that he still thinks the proposal is constitutional despite what Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison says. Miller said he and other supporters of the idea will try to enact it in other rural Minnesota communities, though he declined to name them.

“We are definitely moving forward,” Miller said, adding that he thinks it could even come up again in Prinsburg, Miller's western Minnesota hometown of about 500 people where he first proposed the idea last month. Miller, who was first elected in 2014, has said he did not seek reelection so he could focus on the anti-abortion movement.

Ellison has made it clear that he would sue to block any community that tries to enforce such an ordinance.

“Any municipal ordinance which limits the fundamental rights of pregnant Minnesotans to receive an abortion is unconstitutional,” Ellison said last month in a letter to Prinsburg Mayor Roger Ahrenholz, noting that the Minnesota Supreme Court recognized abortion rights under the state constitution in 1995. "No city in Minnesota has the power to restrict the right to abortion or enact conflicting regulations on health care providers."

With little discussion, the City Council voted Friday against...