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Laura Portuondo

@lauraportuondo.bsky.social
2.9K followers 544 following 278 posts

Law professor writing about repro rights, gender equality, and the First Amendment. She/her. Views my own, not my employer's. Writing here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAu…

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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 1h
Is anyone out there tracking the various cursed DOJ Office of Civil Rights investigations? Or does anyone know of a reliable source for this?
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Jumping on this bandwagon to share the my article, Gendered Liberty, also won a 2026 Dukeminier Award. I’m happy to be in such great company!
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 02/10/2026
Anti-abortion activists would tell you Texas's abortion bans aren't to blame for Tierra Walker's death bc they have medical emergency exceptions But GOP lawyers have made *pretty clear* that those exceptions are just decorative and not actually meant to be used ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...
ballsandstrikes.org
Tierra Walker’s Death Was Preventable. The Conservative Legal Movement Made It Predictable
Republican politicians have made Texas doctors increasingly afraid to provide lifesaving abortion care.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is why resurgent sexism is a kind of socialism for fools. The problem for working class men is not that women are taking their jobs; it’s that there are no good jobs anymore and only women are willing to take them. The answer is not gender traditionalism, but worker solidarity!
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Maybell Romero @maybell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
People following the Cornell case keep asking the same questions about Jane Doe. Why did she text one of the men afterward? Why didn't she call it rape right away? Why didn't she see herself as a victim from the start? My last three articles take these questions on. 🧵
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Nothing says your conservative ideas about gender and race are “common-sense” and good like trying to prevent students from learning anything about those ideas.
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Corinne Blalock @corinneblalock.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Seventeen new public bathrooms is amazing, but let's be honest, it's not enough. Don't miss @rickweinmeyer.bsky.social's excellent piece at @nycpolicyforum.bsky.social about what it would really take to meet the bathroom needs of New York City! nycpolicyforum.substack.com/p/give-new-y...
nycpolicyforum.substack.com
Give New Yorkers a Place to Go
New York City has long failed to provide enough public toilets. The Mamdani administration has the tools to change that.
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Shefali Luthra @shefali.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Big news: The family of Tierra Walker, who died after she couldn't get an abortion, is suing a slate of Texas actors in state court, including AG Ken Paxton. They say the state ban is unconstitutional. This is the first suit of its kind. 19thnews.org/2026/09/texa...
19thnews.org
Tierra Walker died after she couldn’t get an abortion. Her family is suing Ken Paxton
The case, filed Tuesday, argues that Texas’ near-total abortion ban violates the state and U.S. Constitutions, which “prohibit state actors from killing their citizens.”
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Jim Oleske @jimoleske.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
My symposium essay on three recent Supreme Court cases involving the interests of LGBTQ people has been published in final form. Many thanks to @lauraportuondo.bsky.social for the invitation to participate, @profjdnelson.bsky.social for the excellent comments, and the student editors at HJHLP.
houstonhealthlaw.scholasticahq.com
Mahmoud, Skrmetti, and 303 creative: Ignoring original meaning, rewriting precedent, and discounting harm to LGBTQ people | Published in Houston Journal of Health Law & Policy
By James M. Oleske, Jr.. James M. Oleske, Jr. discusses recent decisions to distort precedent, overlook original meaning, and minimize discrimination's harms, ultimately causing a retreat from equal d...
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Fresh off of a transatlantic flight so pardon the sleepy-posting, but some preliminary thoughts on B.P.J… Basically I think Kavanaugh tries to hide a harmful, biologically essentialist vision of sex equality into an “I care about women’s equality” rhetorical sandwich. 1/6
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Kate Redburn @kredburn.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Today the Court denied transgender women and girls constitutional equality. I predicted that the athlete cases could take this turn after last year's decision in Skrmetti: harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/u...
harvardlawreview.org
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Jim Oleske @jimoleske.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
1/ One important doctrinal takeaway from B.P.J. decision is narrowing of gap b/n equal-protection intermediate scrutiny and free-speech int. scrutiny. Former had been viewed as rigorous (captured by "exceedingly persuasive" phrase), while latter long viewed (in Ct's words) as "relatively lenient."
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I used to say that the Court would call state action discriminatory only if it looked like Jim Crow. But increasingly, I think only actual Jim Crow counts—aka something that happened in the past. Present discrimination cannot exist in this Court’s eyes.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Nothing will ever count as racist to this court except affirmative action.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Excited to share my latest: a review of @maryrziegler.bsky.social's excellent new book "Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction." Read it here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
What Personhood Means
124 Mich. L. Rev. 1303 (2026)

23 Pages Posted:
Laura Portuondo
University of Houston Law Center

Date Written: June 12, 2026

Abstract
What would it mean for the Supreme Court to recognize the constitutional personhood of prenatal life? Many assume the answer is clear: a nationwide abortion ban. Professor Mary Ziegler’s new history of the prenatal personhood movement, Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction disrupts this assumption. Ziegler shows how antiabortion advocates, who have long agreed that prenatal life should have rights, have never agreed about what exactly those rights are or what it would look like to enforce them. By illustrating the vagueness of personhood arguments, Personhood reveals a new path to resist them: specific doctrinal analysis of what personhood entails.

This Review engages in the concrete doctrinal analysis that Personhood invites. Such analysis reveals serious problems with a wide range of claims about what personhood requires. While personhood advocates assert that recognizing prenatal personhood would mandate meaningful protection of prenatal life under the Fourteenth Amendment, the reality is that contemporary Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence extends little meaningful protection to most people. Few liberty and equality protections, that is, follow from the status of personhood. The doctrinal weakness of personhood arguments reveals a subtle unifying thread in the fractious movement history that Ziegler documents: all personhood arguments are calls for constitutional change. Contemporary personhood advocates seek to extend protections to prenatal life that are—and are likely to remain—unavailable to women, people of color, and other vulnerable Americans. Calls for prenatal personhood should thus be understood as calls to entrench a deeply unequal constitutional future.
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Alanna Vagianos @alannavagianos.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Four years after the Dobbs decision, pregnant people in states with total abortion bans are now nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period.
jamanetwork.com
Abortion Bans and Pregnancy-Related Care Across Physician Specialties
This qualitative study examines the association of abortion restrictions with abortion-adjacent care across medical specialties via interviews with US physicians who care for pregnant patients.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
When your commitment to religious liberty only extends to conservative culture warriors, maybe you are not actually committed to religious liberty.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
NEW: Trump and Hegseth's anti-trans military policy is based on unconstitutional animus, D.C. Circuit rules. The court's split ruling would protect current trans service members from discharge but allow the Trump admin to keep new trans recruits from joining the military during the case. Law Dork:
lawdork.com
Trump and Hegseth's anti-trans military policy is based on unconstitutional animus, D.C. Circuit rules
The court's split ruling would protect current trans service members from discharge but allow the Trump admin to keep new trans recruits from joining the military during litigation.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/05/2026
NEW: She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help. Emily Waldorf’s case shows how abortion bans have left hospital lawyers, not doctors, deciding who gets care — and how lawmakers and regulators have failed to change that.
propublica.org
She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.
Her case shows how abortion bans have left hospital lawyers, not doctors, deciding who gets care — and how lawmakers and regulators have failed to change that.
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
As someone pointed out to me offline, this is a really funny typo in Alito’s mifepristone dissent: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Alabama (and other "pro-life" states') failure to provide basic medical care to incarcerated women during labor is not just cruel. It is further proof that these states care about punishing women, not protecting life.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
In Louisiana and likely Alabama, actual, cast votes are going to be tossed out as officials speed ahead with new (or previously enjoined) maps. This is such an extreme use case for the Purcell principle that the court ignoring it here signifies that it was always a made-up toy, not law.
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Maggie Blackhawk @maggieblackhawk.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
I dream of a day when the legal academy spends as much attention to congressional and other legislative reform, than they spend debating whom among us is properly critical of the Supreme Court. Reforming Congress is equally (or more) important than rethinking Supreme Court practice and authority.
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Garnet Henderson @garnethenderson.com · 01/05/2026
Mifepristone is normally used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol, for medication abortion. However, misoprotol works on its own, and most abortion providers have misoprostol-only protocols ready to go.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
(1) This is extremely bad for women in red states who rely on telemedicine abortions as a critical lifeline. (2) Nationwide injunctions are forbidden except for when judges don’t like abortion I guess?
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
I think this notion that the Court’s power is justified by the need to protect minority rights underestimates how much the Court does to undermine minority rights. The VRA case is just one example. Recent religious liberty cases (which undermine women’s and LGBTQ rights) are another.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
On this last day of classes, some exciting news: I will be moving to Brooklyn Law School in the fall! At Brooklyn, I will continue teaching Constitutional Law, Family Law, and Reproductive Rights and Justice. I will miss my UH colleagues and students, but I am very excited for this next chapter!
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Same energy as the Court musing that the abortion right recognized in 1973 is no longer necessary because of advances in women’s equality…since the 1970s!
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Please ignore that "Racism is Over" talking point undermines "there is nothing worse than considering race" talking point.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
The Supreme Court once again here to tell you that Racism is Over
First, vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, where many §2 suits arise. As this Court has recognized, “things have changed dramatically” in the decades since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529, 547 (2013). At the time of the Act’s passage, the Nation had faced nearly a century of “entrenched racial discrimination in voting, ‘an insidious and pervasive evil which had been perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unremitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution.’”
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LPE Blog @lpeblog.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Today, a spring scouting report on some of the hottest new LPE and LPE-adjacent articles. Congrats to all the authors on such wonderful placements 🎉
lpeproject.org
Some of the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship
A selection of worthy additions to your “important PDFs” folder.
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Michael C. Dorf @dorfonlaw.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
The 5th Cir upheld a Texas law requiring posting the 10 Commandments in all public school classrooms, saying it wasn't bound by a 1980 SCOTUS ruling invalidating an identical Kentucky law. In my new column for @justiaverdict.bsky.social I explain that its stated reasons for evading precedent fail. 👇
verdict.justia.com
The Fifth Circuit Overrules the Supreme Court and Nullifies the Establishment Clause
Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Indep. School District, which disregarded Supreme Court precedent regarding the Establishment Cl...
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Apparently one of my students has been counting the number of times I said “normative values” in my con law class and the end of semester total is 151 times 😅
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Micah Schwartzman @micahschwartzman.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
CA5 rules that there is no secular purpose requirement under the Establishment Clause. So when individuals act for religious reasons, their actions are treated as religious, triggering exemption claims; but when the state acts for religious reasons, its actions are ... well, nothing to see here ...
yalelawjournal.org
The Asymmetry of Religious Motivation | Yale Law Journal
The Supreme Court’s religious freedom doctrine treats religious motivation asymmetrically: with respect to free exercise, religious motivation suffices for...
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Exhibit A of how the First Amendment protects Christian nationalism, not religious liberty.
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Greer Donley @greerdonley.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
I have a new op-ed in @slate.com today w Yvette Lindgren! We argue that abortion bans are only chilling medically necessary abortions w/o effecting traditional abortion seekers, who have found other ways to access care. Bans do not work. Check it out! slate.com/news-and-pol...
slate.com
Red States Thought They Could Stop Abortions. They Ended Up Stopping Only the Lifesaving Ones.
Abortion bans are failing.
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David S. Cohen @dsc250.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Big abortion win in PA today - the ban on Medicaid funding is unconstitutional! AND there's a fundamental right to abortion! We won! (Though this Commonwealth Court opinion can be appealed - we'll see what our AG does.)
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James Nelson @profjdnelson.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Bosses should not impose religion on employees: virginialawreview.org/articles/cor...
virginialawreview.org
Corporate Disestablishment - Virginia Law Review
Across the American economy, the wall between church and company is crumbling. Businesses large and small have taken on religious identities and now conduct their corporate affairs according to religi...
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Ah yes, but you forget two relevant 1A exceptions here: (1) the religious-belief-does-not-align-with-Republican-Party-line exception and (2) the Donald-Trump-can-do-whatever-he-wants exception to the 1A.
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Matthew Segal @segalmr.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
MONTANA SUPREME COURT: “Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination,” and is subject to strict scrutiny under the Montana Constitution.
Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination. Discrimination based on sex is expressly prohibited under Montana’s unique Nondiscrimination Clause––“[n]either the state nor any person, firm, corporation, or institution shall discriminate on account of . . . sex . . . .” Thus, Article II, Section 4 is
unequivocal in its intolerance for discrimination based on sex. Because sex discrimination involves a fundamental right under Article II, the appropriate level of judicial review is strict scrutiny. Snetsinger, ¶ 17.

¶28 Being transgender is also a suspect class under the Equal Protection Clause of
Article II, Section 4,––“[n]o person shall be denied equal protection of the law.”
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Susan Rinkunas @susanrinkunas.com · 09/04/2026
it was never ever going to stop with banning care for minors (care that their parents consented to btw)
newsfromthestates.com
Ban on using public funds for adult gender transitions advanced by Oklahoma House
OKLAHOMA CITY — House lawmakers on Wednesday advanced various bills that attempt to control how taxpayer funds can be spent on health care-related services.The most controversial of the measures, whic...
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Sauer: past senators were racist bc they didn’t want to make Chinese immigrants citizens Also Sauer: we should get rid of birthright citizenship bc Chinese people might get it!!!
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Living constitutionalism is ok in this case I guess.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Feeling all the feels because my law students gave me this teaching award today 🥹 In an increasingly upside down legal world, my students help keep me grounded and motivated. I’m so lucky to teach them!
Image of a paper award reading: This award is presented to Laura Portuondo in recognition of being selected as the 2025-2026 Professor of the Year by the Order if the Barons.
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Laura Portuondo @lauraportuondo.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
I think Kagan is trying to do a kind of constitutional politics here: hammer the principles and the conservative justices will follow them in the future. But it doesn’t work and legitimates bad outcomes. KBJ offers another (better): hammer the politics and delegitimate.
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Gemma Donofrio @gemmadonofrio.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Post-Chiles, Dobbs, and Skrmetti, states can deprive people of reproductive autonomy and youth of gender-affirming care, while simultaneously allowing medical and non-medical actors use falsehoods to deprive people of abortion or discourage them from living as themselves.
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