SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The unusual legal strategy used to ban most abortions in Texas is already increasingly being employed in Republican-led states to target pornography, LGBT rights and other hot-button cultural issues.

While private residents filing lawsuits is a fixture of some arenas like environmental law, some warn that expanding it and applying it to new areas could have a boomerang effect if Democrats were to use it on issues like gun control.

When Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice would sue over the Texas law, he said it could become a model "for ac...