trigger law

noun

variants or less commonly trigger ban

plural trigger laws also trigger bans

: a currently unenforceable law that upon the occurrence of an event (such as a court decision) becomes enforceable

A Louisiana judge blocked enforcement on Monday of statewide abortion ban designed to automatically go into effect when Roe [v. Wade] fell. Two abortion rights groups on Monday filed a challenge to Louisiana's trigger law, which went into effect following the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that struck down the federal right to abortion.—

Olafimihan Oshin

Examples of trigger law in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

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One of those states is Missouri, the first state to use a trigger law to ban all non-medically necessary abortions. —

Yasmine Salam, NBC News, 1 Nov. 2024 The amendment also creates a trigger law so that if recreational marijuana becomes federally legal, existing dispensaries in Arkansas would be able to sell recreational marijuana. —

Alex Golden, Axios, 4 Oct. 2024 As a result, Kentucky's 2019 trigger law, which stops abortions unless posing a serious medical risk to the mother, went into effect. —

Rachel Smith, The Courier-Journal, 3 Oct. 2024 When Gonzalez needed care, Alabama's trigger law prohibiting nearly all abortions had gone into effect, after Roe was overturned. —

Kendall Ross, ABC News, 26 Mar. 2024 See all Example Sentences for trigger law