Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Abortion Medication Restriction on Legal Standing
There are other cases similar to this in the pipeline coming, but for now the Supreme Court has rejected a challenge against the widely used abortion drug mifepristone citing a lack of standing by the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to limit access to a widely used abortion medication, rejecting a challenge from antiabortion doctors two years after the court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade on procedural grounds.
In a unanimous ruling, the court sided with the Biden administration and the manufacturer of mifepristone and reversed a lower court decision that would have made it more difficult to obtain the drug used in more than 60 percent of U.S. abortions. The ruling was not on the substance of the case, but on a procedural ruling that the plaintiffs did not have legal grounds to bring the case.
Writing for the court, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the antiabortion doctors who brought the challenge do not prescribe or use mifepristone, and the FDA’s relaxed regulation of the medication does not require those doctors to do or refrain from doing anything.
“Rather, the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain,” Kavanaugh wrote. Under the Constitution, he added, a group’s “desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.
Ever since the high court eliminated the nationwide right to abortion in 2022, medications to terminate pregnancy have grown in importance and become a major target of litigation, in part because the pills can be sent by mail, including to states that have severely limited or banned abortions.
The justices were reviewing a decision from the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that said that the Food and Drug Administration failed to follow proper procedures or thoroughly explain its reasoning when it loosened regulations for obtaining mifepristone in 2016 and 2021.
I really don’t like these “reversed for lack of standing” decisions. If you’re going to overrule multiple lower courts then there ought to at least be some argument about it, because that’s a tool that’s eventually going to be used for stuff people don’t like.
“You claimed that racial bias in hiring harmed you, and the Circuit Court agreed. But you went to another employer and got a perfectly good job anyway, just not that one, so as far as we can tell you weren’t harmed; decision reversed for lack of standing, next please.”
“You claim that not being able to get an abortion in your home state harmed you, but then you went and got one in another state, so you got what you wanted, no harm, lack of standing, GTFO.”
And let’s be clear, this ruling was absolutely not about preserving womens’ rights to get an abortion, this was about “we aren’t going to declare the FDA un-Constitutional today”.Report
Its also another slap from SCOTUS to the circuit judge in question who seems to think his personal and highly conservative world view trumps the constitution.Report
Are you a bot? That was not at all a response to anything I wrote.Report
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You won’t believe what those far-right hacks did this time!Report