KINGSTON, N.Y. — Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck said he is “hopeful” but not necessarily confident that with incoming Texas Attorney General Nathan Johnson’s vow to honor other states’ shield laws, the Lone Star State will drop its lawsuit over his refusal to file a judgment against a New Paltz doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman.
“I’m just kind of holding my breath here, waiting patiently for January first,” he said.
Less than 24 hours after winning the election, Johnson, a Democrat, said he would not continue his soon-to-be predecessor Ken Paxton’s practice of suing doctors in other states for sending abortion medication to patients in Texas
In the Thursday, Nov. 5, edition of the Texas Tribune, Johnson was quoted as saying that while he doesn’t have the power to change the state’s abortion laws, “What I can do is cease using Texas abortion laws as an instrument of persecution and intimidation, harassment and political showboating. All four of those things have happened.”
Whether that also means he will withdraw the lawsuits already pending against officials, like Bruck, remains to be seen.
“You know, he doesn’t get in there until January, so from today until January, I don’t know,” Bruck said. “I don’t know if anything can or will happen between now and January. I hope not, and then we can potentially work with the new attorney general.”
Bruck found himself at the center of a lawsuit filed against Margaret “Maggie” Daley Carpenter when he refused to file a civil judgment requested by Paxton against Carpenter for allegedly prescribing the abortion drugs misoprostol and mifepristone to a Dallas-area woman via telemedicine. The abortion medications are illegal in Texas.
A Texas judge issued a summary judgment ordering Carpenter to pay the $100,000 penalty along with roughly $13,000 in attorney’s fees and court costs, plus post-judgment interest.
Bruck refused to file the civil judgment against Carpenter, saying as a government employee he had to comply with New York’s shield law, which protects providers from other states’ reach.
Paxton sued Bruck in an attempt to force him to file the judgment, but in an early test of the state’s shield law, New York State Supreme Court Justice David Gandin dismissed that lawsuit on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025.
In his ruling, Gandin wrote that the medical services Carpenter rendered are legal in New York and that they fell “squarely within the definition of ‘legally protected health activity’” under the state’s shield law.
New York is among eight states with shield laws that protect providers from other states’ reach. Abortion opponents claim the laws violate a constitutional requirement that states respect the laws and legal judgments of other states.
Paxton appealed that ruling, calling Gandin’s interpretation “absurd” and claiming it raised a number of constitutional questions.
That appeal is currently pending before the Appellate Division, Third Department.
According to Texas officials, Carpenter sent the medication to a 20-year-old Texas woman who was nine weeks pregnant. In the lawsuit against Carpenter, Paxton said the woman failed to inform the biological father that she was pregnant and had no life-threatening physical conditions that were “aggravated by, caused by, or arising from the pregnancy that placed her at risk of death or any serious risk of substantial impairment.”
New York is one of several states, including Delaware, where Paxton has filed civil lawsuits against doctors, nurse practitioners, and telehealth networks for illegally mailing abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol into Texas in violation of the state’s near-total abortion ban.