Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday temporarily extended a hold on a lower court ruling that would have imposed restrictions on access to an abortion drug, a move meant to give the justices more time to consider the issue.
In a similar order last week, Alito had said the court would rule by 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The new order – called an “administrative stay” – moves that deadline to Friday, April 21.
The order was written by Alito because he has jurisdiction over the lower court that ruled in the dispute.
“Today’s order tells us nothing about how the full Court is going to rule other than that it’s likely there will be some kind of writing, whether by the majority or by Justices who might be writing separate concurrences or dissents,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “But it’s impossible to know which way that ruling is going to go; all we know for sure is that we’ll know more by the end of the evening on Friday.”
The case is the most important abortion-related dispute to reach the high court since the justices overturned Roe v. Wade last term, triggering conservative states across the country to either ban or severely restrict the procedure. How the dispute over medication abortion is ultimately resolved could make it more difficult for women to obtain abortion, even in the states that still allow it.
At issue is the scope of the US Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate a drug, mifepristone, that the medical community has deemed safe and effective. Mifepristone has been used by millions of women across the country in the more than two decades that it has been on the market.
The legal controversy began last November when a group representing doctors who oppose abortion filed suit, arguing that the FDA had…
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