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The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court Friday to intervene in an emergency dispute over a Texas judge’s medication abortion drug ruling, requesting that the court step in now rather than wait for an appeal to formally play out at the federal appellate level.
The case is the most important abortion-related dispute to reach the high court since the justices overturned Roe v. Wade last term. It centers on the scope of the US Food and Drug Administration’s authority to regulate a drug that is used in the majority of abortions today in states that still allow the procedure.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in the filing that it “concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone.”
She said that if the ruling were allowed to stand it would “inflict grave harm on women, the medical system, the agency, and the public.”
Danco, a manufacturer of the drug, also asked the justices to step in on an emergency basis before Friday.
The clock is ticking. If the Supreme Court does not step in, the district court’s ruling, as amended by a subsequent appeals court opinion, will go into effect at midnight CT, and access to the drug, Mifepristone, will be restricted while the appeals process plays out.
Both the government and Danco are asking the court to freeze the lower court opinion, or alternatively, agree to take up the case themselves and hear arguments before the summer recess, a very expedited time frame.
