The Supreme Court has ruled on the closely watched mifepristone appeal, holding that the anti-abortion challengers lack legal standing to bring their lawsuit, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a unanimous opinion for the court.
At issue was whether the anti-abortion doctors and groups who brought the challenge had legal standing to do so, as well as the legality of Food and Drug Administration actions that expanded access to the widely used pill.
The high court’s hearing in March revealed skepticism from the justices on the first point, suggesting that the court might reject the lawsuit on standing grounds.
That’s what happened Thursday. “Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue,” Kavanaugh wrote for the court.
The case stemmed from last year’s unprecedented action by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, a Trump appointee who sought to undo the drug’s 2000 approval by the FDA. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed Kacsmaryk’s ruling but upheld restrictions on pill access, including by mail.
The lower court ruling, which the justices reversed Thursday, had been on hold while litigation played out. The Biden administration told the justices that, if the ruling were to take effect, then that would “upend the regulatory regime for mifepristone, with damaging consequences for women seeking lawful abortions and a healthcare system that relies on the availability of the drug under the current conditions of use.” So this Supreme Court ruling preserves mifepristone access in a case that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place. But threats to abortion rights loom nationwide, ahead of another possible Trump administration and from the Supreme Court itself, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The justices have another important abortion ruling coming soon in an appeal involving the availability of emergency medical care in states with abortion bans. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for weekly updates on the top legal stories, including news from the Supreme Court, the Donald Trump cases and more.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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