{"id":629932,"date":"2026-05-08T00:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T00:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/629932\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T00:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T00:43:08","slug":"louisiana-urges-supreme-court-to-leave-in-place-order-barring-mailing-of-abortion-pill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/629932\/","title":{"rendered":"Louisiana urges Supreme Court to leave in place order barring mailing of abortion pill"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state of Louisiana on Thursday afternoon urged the Supreme Court in Danco Laboratories v. Louisiana<\/a> and GenBioPro v. Louisiana<\/a>to leave in place an order<\/a> by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that prohibits the mailing of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions, which are in turn the most common form of abortion in the United States. Justice Samuel Alito, who fields emergency requests from the 5th Circuit, on Monday temporarily<\/a> paused<\/a> the lower court\u2019s order to give the Supreme Court time to consider a request from two manufacturers of mifepristone to reinstate access to that drug. Alito\u2019s order means that mifepristone will remain widely available nationwide at least until Monday, May 11, the date on which the temporary pause expires.<\/p>\n

In a 58-page filing<\/a>, Louisiana told the justices that the Biden administration\u2019s decision to make mifepristone available by mail was part of an effort to \u201cundermine\u201d the Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/a>, overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. It wrote that mifepristone coming from out of state by mail is \u201ccausing approximately 1,000 illegal abortions in Louisiana each month.\u201d Moreover, it added, the manufacturers\u2019 \u201creal fear is that, under the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision, they might not be able to sell as many abortion drugs as they would like.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if the court does opt to pause the 5th Circuit\u2019s order, the state concluded, it would agree that the court should take up the case now and hear \u201coral argument before the summer recess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s filing was the latest chapter in a dispute over access to mifepristone that dates back to the Biden administration. In 2024, the Supreme Court\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that doctors and medical groups opposed to abortion did not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, to challenge the Food and Drug Administration\u2019s expansion of access to mifepristone.<\/p>\n

That case,\u00a0FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine<\/a>, was brought by several doctors who are opposed to abortion on religious or moral grounds, as well as medical groups whose members are opposed to abortion. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk rescinded both the FDA\u2019s initial approval of the drug in 2000 and its 2016 and 2021 expansions of access to it, which included allowing the drug to be used through the 10th week of pregnancy, allowing health-care providers who are not physicians to prescribe the drug, and permitting it to be prescribed without an in-person visit.<\/p>\n

On appeal, the 5th Circuit upheld the part of Kacsmaryk\u2019s ruling that rolled back the agency\u2019s 2016 and 2021 changes that had expanded access to mifepristone.<\/p>\n

In June 2024, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court\u2019s ruling and sent the case back to the lower courts. In his\u00a0opinion for the court<\/a>, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the challengers had \u201csincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections\u201d to elective abortion \u201cby others\u201d and to the FDA\u2019s 2016 and 2021 changes to the conditions on the use of the drug. But those objections, he said, did not provide a right to challenge the changes, because the doctors and medical groups had not shown that they would be harmed by the FDA\u2019s mifepristone policies.<\/p>\n

Louisiana\u00a0filed its own lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0last fall, asking a federal judge to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. After the district court put the case on hold to give the FDA time to complete its own review of mifepristone\u2019s safety, Louisiana went to the 5th Circuit, asking that court to re-impose the requirement while litigation continues. The court of appeals\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that Louisiana has a right to sue because, by allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth and sent by mail, the \u201cFDA \u2018opened the door for mifepristone to be remotely prescribed to Louisiana women,\u2019\u201d even though Louisiana generally bars abortion.<\/p>\n

The drug manufacturers, Danco and GenBioPro, came to the Supreme Court on Saturday, asking the justices to intervene. Danco told the court<\/a> that the 5th Circuit should have applied the same analysis that the Supreme Court used in 2024 to conclude that the doctors and medical groups did not have standing. And in particular, it said, \u201cLouisiana\u2019s theory\u2014that it can base standing on having to pay those doctors if someone who received FDA-approved mifepristone through the mail seeks follow-up care to treat a complication\u2014is a\u00a0more\u00a0attenuated version of the\u201d theories that the court specifically rejected two years ago. And Louisiana\u2019s claim that it is injured because of the disconnect between federal law and its own state law is not the kind of injury that courts can review, Danco said.<\/p>\n

GenBioPro\u00a0contended that<\/a>\u00a0if the 5th Circuit\u2019s order is put on hold, it merely \u201cwill allow the years-long status quo to remain in force while the Food and Drug Administration (\u2018FDA\u2019) completes its ongoing review\u201d of mifepristone\u2019s safety. Moreover, it suggested, the lower court\u2019s \u201c\u2018unusually broad and novel view of standing\u2019\u201d \u201cwould allow States to challenge virtually any agency action whenever they allege downstream costs or interference with state policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its brief on Thursday, Louisiana countered that it has made a clear showing that it has a legal right to sue. First, it said, its sovereignty has been injured, both by the violation of its laws and by its inability to enforce those laws. Second, Louisiana said, it has suffered precisely the kind of \u201cpocketbook\u201d injury that provides standing to sue. It has had to spend, the state told the justices, more than $17,000 just to investigate three cases involving mifepristone sent through the mail from out of state. And it has also had to pay \u201cover $92,000 in Medicaid dollars \u2026 for emergency room care and hospitalization resulting from just two mifepristone-induced abortions in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is equally clear, Louisiana argued, that reinstating the in-person dispensing requirement would provide relief for the state\u2019s injuries \u2013 another key factor in determining whether a plaintiff has a right to sue. As evidence, Louisiana pointed to statements by the drug companies\u2019 allies warning about the effects of allowing the 5th Circuit\u2019s order to remain in place. For example, it observed, the Guttmacher Institute contends that requiring mifepristone to be prescribed and dispensed in person \u201cwould severely restrict access to mifepristone in every state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Louisiana asserted that it is likely to prevail on the merits of its claims \u2013 an important factor in determining whether preliminary relief is appropriate. The FDA itself, Louisiana stressed, is not defending the decision to allow mifepristone to be sent through the mail. And both lower courts, it said, \u201calso rightly concluded that Louisiana is likely to succeed in its\u201d argument that the FDA violated the federal law governing administrative agencies when it reached that decision.<\/p>\n

The drug companies will have an opportunity to reply to Louisiana\u2019s brief. The court is likely to act on their request before Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. EDT, when Alito\u2019s temporary stay is scheduled to expire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The state of Louisiana on Thursday afternoon urged the Supreme Court in Danco Laboratories v. Louisiana and GenBioPro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-629932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}