Right-wing judge substitutes plaintiffs in new bid to restrict abortion meds
U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is once again at the forefront of the effort to ban mifepristone.
A Texas judge ruled that three attorney generals can serve as plaintiffs in a case that has challenged whether mifepristone can be distributed in antiabortion states.
At the center of the ruling was U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a member of the U.S. District Court for the northern district of Texas, who invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s long-time approval of mifepristone in a previous phase of the same case that involved different plaintiffs.
The lawsuit, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, centers on the conflict between the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone–the first pill in the two-pill abortion regimen–and states that have banned abortion. An antiabortion plaintiff, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, contended that the FDA did not correctly approve the use of the drug for abortions.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice sought to end the case altogether based on longstanding legal precedent making clear that a case must be dismissed if the original plaintiffs lacked standing. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Alliance didn’t have legal standing.
Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Reproductive Freedom Project, issued a statement.
“Once the Supreme Court found that the anti-abortion groups who brought the Alliance litigation never had a right to sue in the first place, this outrageous case should have been put to bed,” Kaye said. “Instead, the same Texas judge who already tried to take mifepristone off the market nationwide has left the door open for extremist politicians to continue attacking medication abortion in his courtroom.”
The Attorney Generals for Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri filed a 199-page complaint arguing for their right to take up the case instead of the dismissed activists. Kacsmaryk granted their appeal.
Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri are expected to ask the court, which previously ruled to take mifepristone off the shelves nationwide in 2023, to issue another nationwide order imposing restrictions on mifepristone, including prohibiting patients from obtaining the medication via telehealth and then filling their prescription through a mail-order or local pharmacy. If they succeed, patients will be forced to travel hundreds, or even thousands, of miles to the nearest abortion provider just to be handed a pill.
The attorneys general have indicated that they will also seek to withdraw FDA’s approval for the generic version of mifepristone that comprises two-thirds of the market; to withdraw FDA’s approval for mifepristone use by minors; and to prohibit nurse-practitioners and other qualified health care professionals from prescribing mifepristone, among other nationwide restrictions.
“Today’s ruling means that President-elect Trump will have an early opportunity to either stay true to his word, or else instruct his Department of Justice to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence and stop defending access to medication abortion. The American people will be watching,” Kaye said.