For more than a year, a specter named Matthew Kacsmaryk has loomed over abortion access in the United States. Kacsmaryk, a former lawyer for Christian right causes who Donald Trump appointed to the federal bench, attempted to ban the drug mifepristone, a medication used in about half of all US abortions, in the spring of last year.
Now this case, known as FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, will receive a hearing before the Supreme Court on Tuesday — though there’s not a lot of suspense regarding the outcome. The Court blocked Kacsmaryk’s decision last April, temporarily leaving mifepristone on the market while this case worked its way through the appellate process.
That’s a strong sign that even this very conservative Supreme Court — the same Court that overruled Roe v. Wade — wants no part of this attack on mifepristone.
Kacsmaryk’s opinion was, to put it mildly, sloppy. He allowed the plaintiffs to challenge the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, even though the statute of limitations for such claims is six years and there was no valid reason to extend it by nearly two decades. He relied on two discredited studies that have since been retracted by their publisher. He cited another “study” that collected “data” entirely from anonymous blog posts published on an anti-abortion website. According to a brief filed by the ACLU and two other organizations, Kacsmaryk relied on testimony by a “doctor” who isn’t actually a physician at all — the man in question’s only advanced degree is a masters in theological studies.
Also, Kacsmaryk didn’t even have jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a court dominated by MAGA Republicans, did toss out part of Kacsmaryk’s decision: It acknowledged that the statute of limitations to challenge the FDA’s 2000 decision to approve mifepristone has expired. But the Fifth Circuit’s ruling would still have…
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