The Supreme Court voted to keep extreme restrictions on a commonly used abortion pill from taking effect while litigation in the case continues.
The restrictions came from Donald-Trump appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a longtime anti-abortion activist in Texas who, on April 7, issued an unprecedented and dubiously reasoned ruling suspending the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
A 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, with two Trump appointees in the majority, then narrowed his ruling on dubious grounds of its own, leaving intact restrictions from Kacsmaryk’s ruling that would, among other things, bar mifepristone access by mail. But Kacsmaryk’s narrowed ruling still hadn’t gone into effect, while litigation played out over whether it can while the merits are being challenged. The 5th Circuit is set to hear oral arguments in the case on May 17.
Most recently, Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency litigation from the 5th Circuit, paused the restrictions from taking effect through Friday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
The Justice Department warned in a legal filing to the Supreme Court that letting the restrictions take effect “would scramble the regulatory regime governing” mifepristone, which “has been used by more than five million American women over the last two decades.” Danco Laboratories, which manufactures name brand mifepristone Mifeprex and is also challenging the restrictions, called Kacsmaryk’s order a “first-in-a-century judicial second-guessing of FDA’s scientific judgment” that “prompted immediate chaos and nationwide confusion.”
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