The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s loosening of regulations regarding widely prescribed abortion pills. Legal experts have said the case could be thrown out for lack of standing, but the justices seemed skeptical of that idea, meaning the FDA has no liability.
Erin Hawley, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, argued the case on behalf of a group of doctors challenging the FDA’s lax access restrictions on mifepristone.
The justices seemed skeptical that the doctors had standing to sue, but they seemed to take issue with the FDA’s lack of accountability for harm caused by abortion pills.
“This is very troubling. It’s one thing that no one is standing in a taxpayer case that affects everyone. Here we have the FDA, and the FDA actually has no public accountability at all. They’re not owed any money and they’re continuing to deregulate mifepristone. So I think that’s going to be some kind of problem.’The courts are really having a hard time,” Hawley said.
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Supreme Court of the United States. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Justice Samuel Alito at one point questioned Attorney General Elizabeth Preloger, arguing for the FDA.
“The statement was made that no court has ever second-guessed the FDA’s decisions regarding access to drugs,” he said. “It’s never an afterthought. Do you think the FDA is infallible?
“So your argument is that it doesn’t matter whether the FDA flagrantly violated the law or failed to do something that should have put women’s health at risk,” he said.
“Is it so bad that no one can take it to court?” he pressed.
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Associate Justice Samuel Alito (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Thomas Zipping, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said Mr. Alito’s questioning may have revealed his thinking about who stands on such issues.
“If you take a view of standing, the result is not that plaintiffs cannot sue, but that no one can sue.”Perhaps your view of standing is that no one can sue in the first place.” “That’s wrong,” he said. “That was interesting.”
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Erin Hawley, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom and the wife of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), will be heard by a judge in the Joe Biden administration’s efforts to maintain widespread access to abortion. He speaks with the media outside the U.S. Supreme Court as he watches arguments. Pill, outside court in Washington, USA, March 26, 2024. (Reuters/Evelyn Hochstein)
“Judges sometimes ask questions that are related to a certain kind of thought process, rather than just an answer to a specific legal question, that is, something that the judge has been considering.” Zipping said.
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“They were probably talking about what they were thinking out loud with their clerks, and that was obviously important to Justice Alito and the chief justice,” he added.
