The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a coalition of conservative activists seeking to challenge the availability of abortion medication in the United States lack the necessary legal standing to challenge the legality of the drug, rejecting the bid to further restrict national access to medical abortion care.
The case, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, centered on access to mifepristone, commonly used in medication abortions — the most widely used method of abortion in the U.S.
In a unanimous opinion — a rare feat — Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice. Therefore, the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge FDA’s actions.”
“As Justice Scalia memorably said, Article III requires a plaintiff to first answer a basic question: ‘What’s it to you?’” Kavanaugh wrote. “For a plaintiff to get in the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of what the governing law is, the plaintiff cannot be a mere bystander, but instead must have a “personal stake” in the dispute,” he added. The decision was a sharp rebuke to the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine given the post-Roe v Wade court’s typically friendly approach to anti-abortion cases.
While conservatives have pushed the Supreme Court to end mifepristone’s FDA approval, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a version of the case focused on reversing changes made under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden to expand access to mifepristone; as such, the case only pertained to limiting its availability, rather than banning it outright.
The push to eliminate the drug’s FDA approval will no doubt continue: The GOP’s Project 2025 Plan for a new Republican presidential term includes the idea that the “the FDA is ethically and legally obliged to revisit and withdraw its initial approval.”
Pro-choice groups are well aware that mifepristone is still in the crosshairs of conservative activists. “While we are pleased that the Court dismissed this case on standing, the case should have been dismissed long ago and not permitted to wreak havoc on people and our health care system,” said Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman. “Despite today’s decision, this case isn’t over. Extremist Attorneys General in Idaho, Missouri, and Kansas continue to pursue this same case in front of Judge Kacsmaryk with the goal of restricting access to mifepristone.”
The Biden campaign also warned Americans that the abortion pill is far from safe. “It would be a devastating mistake for voters or members of the media to take away from today’s ruling that medication abortion is now ‘safe’ from MAGA attacks,” the campaign said in a statement. “If given the chance, Donald Trump will ban medication abortion.”
