Justice Samuel Alito handed down a brief order Friday that temporarily hits pause on a high-profile lawsuit seeking to ban mifepristone, a drug used in more than half of all abortions in the United States. The most immediate upshot of this order is that mifepristone remains legal and fully available — for now.
Alito’s order, known as an administrative stay, does not necessarily mean that the very conservative Supreme Court will resist the temptation to ban mifepristone. Appellate courts often issue such administrative stays in order to buy themselves time to fully consider the case, without being forced to rush because of an arbitrary deadline.
Alito’s order remains in effect through Wednesday. The order was issued by Alito acting alone through a process that allows a single justice to temporarily halt decisions handed down by federal appeals courts. Alito is the justice assigned to review such cases arising out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
In this case, known as FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a longtime Christian right activist, and now Trump-appointed judge, named Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. Kacsmaryk stayed his order for just seven days, which means that it would have taken effect at 1 am ET on Saturday unless a higher court intervened. On Thursday, a federal appeals court stayed Kacsmaryk’s full ban of mifepristone, but left in place other restrictions that would have severely curtailed access to the drug on the same timeline, unless the Supreme Court intervened.
The administrative stay effectively eliminates this deadline, giving the justices until next Wednesday to decide what to do with this case.
If the Supreme Court, which is dominated by Republican appointees, ultimately decides not to block the lower court orders attacking mifepristone, it will have many of the same effects as if Kacsmaryk’s original order had…
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