From Kansas to Tennessee, U.S. states are copying a novel legal tactic from Texas to turn neighbors on each other and strip residents of their rights.

In 2021, Texas passed SB 8, an aggressive law that outlawed abortion after six weeks. In practice, this banned almost all abortions since most people don’t learn they’re pregnant so soon. Texas imposed the bill nearly one year before the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. 

SB 8 clearly violated accepted constitutional law under Roe v. Wade, which had made abortion legal nationwide since 1973. But Texas had a plan to get around that pesky fact. 

Since imposing criminal penalties against pregnant people seeking abortions or doctors who provided them would likely have gotten the law declared unconstitutional and overturned pretty quickly, SB 8 is enforced through civil lawsuits rather than by the government. That is, everyday people—not state prosecutors—enforce the law.

This legal loophole is the reason SB 8 is nicknamed the “bounty hunter” law. It encourages people to sue their neighbors for having an abortion. Their incentive: money. 

Now, the Texas bounty hunter strategy is being deployed nationwide—and testing the legality of this theory.

Supreme Court skirts the problem

Texas’ idea to rely on civilians rather than the government to enforce its abortion ban did bypass the constitutional issue created by Roe. But it also created a new legal problem. 

Usually, in order to bring a suit for a financial reward, a person has to show they have “standing,” meaning they were directly harmed in some way. Texas SB 8 apparently requires no such standing. Anyone can sue a person they suspect has had an abortion. 

Financial settlements on civil lawsuits are also typically based on the harm one suffered. But with the bounty hunter law, the financial settlement seems to be treated more as a payment for reporting abortion patients to the state than restitution for actual distress. 

SB 8 should have been thrown out as unconstitutional on those grounds. Instead, when a challenge to Texas law reached the Supreme Court in 2021, the justices decided to sidestep untangling this convoluted legal strategy. 

In Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the Court ruled that the case could not proceed against judges or clerks but could proceed against licensing authorities. That decision, however, would not block the implementation of the law. This maneuver allowed SB 8 to stand without the Court actually ruling on its constitutionality.

To date, no lawsuit has successfully been litigated under SB 8. But in 2023, the architect of the law, right-wing lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, helped a Texas man file a wrongful death suit against his wife’s friends for helping her obtain an abortion. The case was eventually dropped, but only after nearly two years of what one of the defendants called “abusive litigation.” 

Critics of the law also warn that bounty hunter mechanisms could financially incentivize domestic abusers to sue if their partner chooses not to bring a child into a violent household. In theory, even rapists could sue their victim for getting an abortion if the rape has not been reported to the police. Those lawsuits might fail, but they could be used to drag women into court to exert control and abuse.

New bounty hunter laws

Since the Supreme Court allowed SB 8 to stand, more anti-abortion “bounty hunter” laws have been popping up across the country. 

Some attempt to resolve the issue of legal standing. 

A 2022 Idaho anti-abortion law specifies that only family members—specifically those related to one of the fetus’ parents—of an aborted fetus can sue. While this law doesn’t encourage random citizens to profit from reporting the health-care choices of their neighbors, it is still legally problematic. Traditionally, a family member wouldn’t have standing to sue over an abortion, because a parent or a spouse isn’t owed a baby. 

In 2024, Tennessee passed a law that allowed the parents of a minor child to sue anyone who “intentionally recruits, harbors, or transports a pregnant unemancipated minor” to get abortion care. Targets could include a friend, a cab driver, a doctor, and a host of other people. 

No lawsuit has succeeded yet under either of these laws. Both the Tennessee and Idaho abortion laws have been making their way through the courts with partial blocks and appeals. 

A new Texas law is also being tested in court. In December 2025, Texas HB 7, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who distributes, manufactures, provides, or mails abortion medication into Texas, went into effect. 

Two months later, a Texas man amended his lawsuit against a California doctor who prescribed abortion pills supposedly taken by his then-girlfriend to include an HB 7 violation.

Meanwhile, Kansas is applying the Texas bounty hunter approach to anti-trans legislation. The state’s new anti-trans bathroom law gives people “aggrieved by an invasion of privacy or other harm” when using a public bathroom also used by a trans person the right to sue the person they believe is trans.

This approach theoretically offers a fig leaf of legal standing—that your privacy is violated if a trans person uses the same bathroom as you. But the Kansas law is essentially applying the same shaky legal logic as Texas’ abortion bounty hunter law. It provides financial incentive for people to report their trans neighbors for simply using the bathroom. 

The law also invalidated trans people’s drivers licenses if the gender on their ID doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. In addition to creating administrative chaos around replacement IDs, Kansas requires people to present a valid photo ID to vote. If trans Kansans have trouble replacing their documents, they may not be able to participate in the 2026 midterm elections. Even if they replace their documentation, the gender markers on their IDs might no longer match their gender presentation, leading to questioning at the polls.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the anti-trans bill on Feb. 13, 2026, citing issues with visiting family members in nursing homes and hospitals. Her rationale sidestepped the question of trans people’s rights. The Kansas senate overrode the governor’s veto anyway, on Feb. 17, and the Kansas House followed suit the next day, meaning the bill is now law.

Today, if a person in Kansas is sued for using a different bathroom than the one designated for the sex they were assigned at birth, they could be forced to defend themselves in civil court. 

Even if they aren’t found liable in the suit, they may have to spend money on lawyers and potentially disclose private medical information to “prove” their gender. Beyond the public humiliation of enduring such a court hearing, such proceedings could “out” people as trans, putting them at risk of all kinds of anti-trans harassment. 

A little more than two-thirds of trans people reported having ever experienced verbal harassment when using public bathrooms, according to a 2008 study published in Journal of Public Management & Social Policy, the most recent comprehensive study available. More recent survey data from The Williams Institute, a think tank that studies gender identity and the law, reports that in 2022, 6 percent of trans people reported verbal harassment while using a public bathroom in the past year alone.

The anti-trans frenzy can also sweep cisgender women into its dragnet. In March 2025, two cis women reported being harassed by a male security guard in a Boston hotel who wanted them to prove their gender while they were using the women’s bathroom. A month earlier, two male sheriffs confronted a Black cis woman in a Tucson, Arizona, Walmart women’s restroom because a store employee allegedly assumed she was trans. 

State legislators aren’t the only lawmakers passing anti-trans bounty laws. In 2024 Odessa, Texas became the first municipality to pass its own “bounty hunter” law to police trans bathroom use. A local ordinance now states that trans people are not only subject to trespassing charges and fines for using the bathroom that doesn’t match their assigned sex at birth, but also that private citizens can also sue trans people for upwards of $10,000. 

The bounty-hunter strategy may have been rolled out to punish people for getting abortions. But it’s expanding into new territory where it may prove even more effective. Logistically it’s easier to notice trans people in a public bathroom than to spy on a neighbor swallowing abortion pills at home. 

And now this kind of legal maneuver has even reached the federal level. 

The Riley Gaines Act, introduced in the House of Representatives on Feb. 4, 2026, would financially incentivize civilian enforcement of anti-trans policy nationwide. The proposal would allow people to sue academic institutions that “negligently or recklessly” allow a “biologically male student athlete to compete in an athletic competition intended exclusively for female student athletes, resulting in harm.” 

Slave catcher laws

The nearest legal precedent for modern-day bounty hunter laws are the slave catching incentives instituted before the Civil War. 

In the antebellum U.S., many slave owners in the South were angry that enslaved people could escape and live in the North without Northerners aiding in returning them. As sectional tensions heated up and anti-slavery sentiment grew, more and more laws were passed to try and protect the Southern slaveholding power. 

The federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was one such law. There was already a federal fugitive slave law in place that affirmed that enslaved people who escaped remained “property” even in free states, but that law wasn’t enough to get most white citizens to turn in their Black neighbors who fled slavery. 

The new law not only imposed financial penalties on people caught aiding a “fugitive slave”—it also gave financial incentive to federal commissioners, people tasked with adjudicating if a captured Black person was free or a runaway. 

Roughly 330 formerly enslaved people were returned to the South in the decade that followed. And the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made many more who fled slavery feel much less safe in their northern communities, driving thousands to migrate further North to Canada.

The Fugitive Slave Act was repealed in 1864, a year before slavery was outlawed in the U.S. 

Nation of snitches

The constitutionality of Texas SB 8 might finally be evaluated in a court of law. A case first brought in 2022, Sadie Weldon v. The Lilith Fund had oral arguments in front of the Texas Supreme Court in January 2026. 

Sadie Weldon, a private citizen in Texas, sought to depose Neesha Davé, the deputy director of an abortion fund called Lilith Fund, in a 202 petition. This type of petition is used to depose someone to gather information before filing a lawsuit. It has been used to target abortion providers and researchers. 

Lilith Fund countersued, asking a judge to declare SB 8 unconstitutional and prevent Weldon from suing under the statute. After two lower courts declined Weldon’s request to dismiss the countersuit, the issue now sits with the Texas Supreme Court. If the countersuit is not dismissed and the case gets sent back to a lower court, a judge could rule on SB 8’s constitutionality.

Until and unless a court declares bounty hunter laws unconstitutional, it’s likely more states will continue to pass laws that financially incentivize residents to spy on their neighbors. 

How long before the government offers money to people who sue the undocumented immigrants who work in your favorite restaurant? Might Texans soon be able to get paid for suing people who seek gender-affirming care? 

The possibilities for persecuting our neighbors are theoretically endless.