At his confirmation hearing in 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts likened the Supreme Court’s role to that of a referee. ball and strike. But what happens when the umpires allow one team more at-bats than the other? Then again, the highly conservative Supreme Court is a unilateral cog in left-wing litigation. Some things never change.
When Donald Trump was president, there was not a single major executive policy that went unchallenged by an openly litigious left-wing legal movement. I can’t remember a time when leftists have been denied the right to sue, whether the issue is related to health care, labor, the environment, or immigration. The court even granted trial to foreigners!
If we are to follow the old rules of the 1790s, they should apply equally to everyone.
Fast forward to last week’s oral argument. FDA vs. Hippocratic Medical AllianceSeven judges believe that Texas doctors have no standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of an abortion pill that was approved under the ridiculous pretext that the pregnancy is a “serious or life-threatening illness.” It seems like it is.
The FDA’s actions were clearly illegal. Regulatory agencies approved the drug mifepristone in 2000. Regulators made changes in 2016 and 2021, removing the need for an in-person doctor’s visit and gestation period limits. In each case, the FDA has circumvented the law by relying on a regulatory process specifically for drugs that treat “serious or life-threatening illnesses.”
Even the Population Council, which led the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in 2000, disagreed with the FDA’s process.they are pregnant do not have disease. They also feared the court would block approval.
Now, at the request of pro-life doctors at Alliance Hippocratic Medicine, it took until April 7, 2023, for U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmalik to rule that the FDA’s approval process was illegal. In a partial reversal, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that while the original approval was OK, the district court was correct in holding that the 2016 and 2021 expansions were illegal.
In December, the Supreme Court granted an appeal reversing most of the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, but not part of Kaczmalik’s ruling. As I pointed out at the time, this was an ominous sign.
last week Oral argument was even more creepy. No one questioned the position of doctors who objected to the approval of illegally permitted drugs they believed to be dangerous. Both Niter Kaczmalik and the 5th Circuit judge questioned the right of allied doctors to sue, citing safety concerns. Mifepristone’s manufacturers admit that between 100,000 and 350,000 users (2% to 7%) have required surgery due to the drug’s side effects. F.D.A. own label Between 2.9% and 4.6% of women say they will end up in the emergency room.
But three Trump appointees to the high court appeared to agree with the chief justice and three liberal appointees during oral argument that the doctors had no standing to sue.
Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed concern about the “proliferation” of large court injunctions in recent years, noting that the lawsuit “subtracts what could be a small lawsuit from FDA regulations and other “This could be a classic example of bringing federal action to Congress nationwide.” . ” Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh also suggested that’s because doctors don’t. Forced They should have no qualifications to prescribe mifepristone.
I understand the purpose of preventing courts from making the most nationally important decisions. But we cannot accept that judges unfairly favor one political side when it comes to who can go to court. If we are to follow the old rules of the 1790s, they should apply equally to everyone. It’s absurd that doctors can’t challenge the way dangerous drugs are approved, even though many regulations can be challenged in court.
For example, environmental legal defense groups have sued almost random plaintiffs who claim that Environmental Protection Agency policies prevent them from seeing factories, and against environmental regulations that they believe result in “aesthetic damage.” has gained an easy position to cause problems.
Furthermore, in 1992, the Supreme Court ruled as follows: Lujan vs. Wildlife Guardian: “There is no doubt that the desire to use or observe an animal species, even for purely aesthetic purposes, is a clear interest in establishing status.” Although the court denied standing bystanders, the court said that standing also extended to workers who handle animals. According to the court’s own logic, a patient’s doctor should have standing to challenge the approval process for a drug known to send patients to the ER.
Given the choice, many of us would tighten the standing rules.But name it just once These supposedly conservative justices enforced current rules against absurd cases from the left.
Instead, these jurists continue to entertain appeals to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s favorable rulings, while the Texas government overturns the will of Texans to secure its borders. Recently, the court, in a clever concurrence by Judge Barrett, urged the Fifth Circuit to reverse its decision to allow Texas’ immigration enforcement law, SB 4, to remain in effect pending a trial on the merits of the law. approved by the court.
The three Trump appointees are, to varying degrees, on opposite ends of the doctrine that denies conservatives political victories arising from legal disputes. Examples of this are now too numerous to count. At some point, people like Kavanaugh and Barrett will have to wonder if they really have a legal way to quell their madness, or if they want to avoid being stigmatized as right-wing extremists in elite social circles. We need to ask whether they are simply fudging their opinions.
