Three Republican-led states will be allowed to move forward with a lawsuit to restrict access to mifepristone, a Texas federal judge ruled Thursday, months after the Supreme Court rejected an earlier argument in the case.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed during President-elect Trump’s first term, said Idaho, Missouri and Kansas can intervene and file a complaint in the case that was originally brought by a group of anti-abortion activists and doctors.
Last year, the Supreme Court dismissed that lawsuit, saying that private parties had no legal basis to challenge access to mifepristone. The justices found the conservative doctors in the lawsuit did not show they had personally been harmed by the government’s actions regulating mifepristone.
In the complaint allowed by Kacsmaryk, the red states claim that some of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) actions to loosen access to mifepristone allowed the pills to flood across their borders, endangering the lives of women and undermining their anti-abortion laws.
The states are challenging the FDA actions that have loosened restrictions on the drug since 2016, including approving it for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy and allowing it to be prescribed by telemedicine and sent through the mail.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that Kansas, Idaho and Missouri did not have legal standing to bring a case to Amarillo, Texas. But Kacsmaryk, who in 2023 ruled against the FDA and ordered the drug off the market, said those arguments weren’t applicable.
He wrote in the decision that the FDA and mifepristone manufacturer Danco will have a separate opportunity to argue for the lawsuit’s dismissal. But the timing of the ruling means the next steps will come from the Trump administration, which could decide not to defend the regulation.
Trump’s attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, did not directly answer when asked by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at her confirmation hearing whether she would commit to defending the FDA’s actions in the case, saying she needed to do more research. Bondi vowed not to let her personal anti-abortion views influence her actions.
The FDA has repeatedly found that mifepristone is safe and that a medication abortion regimen that includes mifepristone and a second drug, misoprostol, is a safe and effective alternative to surgical abortions.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the case didn’t address the underlying regulatory or safety issues the plaintiffs raised, instead deciding the case only on standing.
