A letter from Linda Coffee inviting Sarah Weddington, a fellow UT Law graduate, to co-counsel on the abortion cases they would bring to the U.S. Northern District Court of Texas in 1973.

Coffee’s letter to Sarah Weddington, which will be auctioned on the fifty-third anniversary of when she filed suit in Texas, March 3, 1970. Courtesy of Nate Sanders Auctions ...

Weddington, by then married, pursued women’s issues in Austin. Coffee worked for the Texas Legislative Council and then clerked for Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes.

Coffee later teamed up with fellow UT law school grad, Sarah Weddington, to challenge abortion laws in Texas. “She was going to bring an abortion challenge," Coffee said.

Lawyer Linda Coffee, who recruited Sarah Weddington as her co-counsel in the historic case, started it all in 1970 by paying a $15 filing fee to the U.S. District Court in Dallas.

A letter from Linda Coffee inviting Sarah Weddington, a fellow UT Law graduate, to co-counsel on the abortion cases they would bring to the U.S. Northern District Court of Texas in 1973.

The court blocked not just the Texas laws that Coffee and her co-counsel, Sarah Weddington, had challenged, but all state laws that banned abortions before fetal viability.