A year after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, abortion opponents are frustrated. Months into his second term, there aren’t any new federal limits on mifepristone, a drug used in more than half of all abortions nationwide. Now, the anti-abortion movement is experimenting with a new way to bypass the White House (and Congress) altogether.
In a new lawsuit, Florida’s Republican attorney general James Uthmeier accuses Planned Parenthood of “misrepresenting the safety” of abortion pills and claims the organization’s activities constitute “racketeering” — a charge usually applied to organized crime. Uthmeier seeks more than $350 million in penalties and even asks the court to consider shutting down the organization altogether.
Decades of studies have found mifepristone to be both safe and effective.
Public opposition has given pause to Republicans in Congress and the White House who could impose harsh new limits on mifepristone. But judges in Florida, now firmly a red state, might not have the same qualms about angering voters, and can introduce limits on abortion that affect Americans well beyond the state’s borders.
Florida’s lawsuit relies on the state’s deceptive trade practices law, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce.” Courts interpreting the law are supposed to evaluate three factors: whether a specific action will harm consumers, whether consumers can protect themselves from that harm and whether these injuries outweigh any benefit to consumers or other market competitors.
Uthmeier argues that Planned Parenthood violated state law because the group, both in statements on its website and in its staff’s interactions with patients, claims that mifepristone is safer than Tylenol. Though decades of studies have found mifepristone to be both safe and effective, Uthmeier claims that this comparison to Tylenol is “immoral, unethical, oppressive, and unscrupulous.” His evidence includes, for example, a non-peer reviewed study disseminated by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a think tank that seeks to “apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics.”
Where, you might be asking, does the racketeering accusation come from? To violate the state’s racketeering law, which is usually reserved for the mafia and other such groups, a defendant has to commit more than a certain request number of predicate offenses. Uthmeier argues that each alleged misdemeanor for “misleading advertising” qualifies as one of those.
Uthmeier asks the Florida court to impose massive penalties on Planned Parenthood, including: $350 million for deceptive trade practices ($10,000 for each abortion performed), an additional $1 million for each defendant liable for racketeering, a ban on Planned Parenthood offering mifepristone and the cessation of the organization’s operations across Florida or even the country.
As far as abortion opponents are concerned, all of this could be accomplished by actors who seem almost entirely unaccountable to voters.
Uthmeier’s case is similar to one brought against Planned Parenthood by Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, with the next hearing in that case scheduled for February. It’s no secret that both Uthmeier and Bailey would prefer the federal government to step in to eliminate access to mifepristone. Both attorneys general have been involved in lawsuits intended to reintroduce an in-person dispensation requirement for mifepristone or remove it from the market altogether. And Uthmeier has expressed interest in undermining shield laws, passed in progressive states to protect doctors and other defendants from liability for helping out-of-state patients.
But Republicans in Congress and the White House haven’t yet taken up the call to limit mifepristone. Senate Republicans have pushed the Trump administration to do so, but haven’t introduced anything like a national ban themselves. And though the Trump administration has pledged to study the safety of mifepristone, it has yet taken any concrete action.
Their reasons for hesitation aren’t hard to find: Polls show that restricting mifepristone would be unpopular. With President Trump’s approval underwater, and with the GOP suffering double-digit losses in key 2025 races, Republicans might not want to take another extremely unpopular position.
Uthmeier seems to think that Florida judges won’t share those same qualms. Recent rulings from the Florida Supreme Court, which will have the final word on Uthmeier’s case, show the justices are open to holding that Florida’s Constitution protects rights for fetuses and embryos from the moment an egg is fertilized. No member of the Florida Supreme Court has ever lost a retention election, and even if that were to change, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a particularly vehement opponent of legal abortion, would simply choose a replacement. But though these Republican attorneys general are sheltering in the politics of their conservative states, neither suit is meant to have effects in those states alone. Uthmeier, for example, is asking a Florida court to require Planned Parenthood to change the information about mifepristone on its website, which is read by Americans across the country. The kind of penalties Uthmeier and Bailey request would devastate an organization of Planned Parenthood’s size, imperiling its operations nationwide. Best of all, as far as abortion opponents are concerned, all of this could be accomplished by actors who seem almost entirely unaccountable to voters. That said, it isn’t clear that Uthmeier’s gambit will work. Even Florida judges might hesitate to order Planned Parenthood to shut down its operations across the country. The U.S. Supreme Court in recent years has accorded more First Amendment protection to commercial speech, such as statements on business websites. In 2018, in a case involving anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the speech of professionals such as doctors belong in a category of speech receiving less constitutional protection. The Court has recognized that regulating speech about health care can be a mere smokescreen for suppressing “unpopular ideas or information” or working to “increase state power and suppress minorities.” That could apply to efforts to take down Planned Parenthood. In Florida’s complaint, Uthmeier explicitly complains about Planned Parenthood’s political speech about abortion. Even if Florida judges are convinced that mifepristone is unsafe — against the weight of the evidence — they might be reluctant to say that advertising otherwise was misleading when the federal government itself has vouched for the drug’s safety and efficacy. Whatever the outcome of this suit, strategies such as this one may represent the future for efforts to eliminate mifepristone. American voters may not want limits on mifepristone, but that won’t stop the anti-abortion movement from looking for new ways to put the drug out of reach.
Mary Ziegler is a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law and the author of "Roe: The History of a National Obsession." 
