Supreme Court unanimously rejects challenge to FDA approval of mifepristone

June 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday unanimously rejected an effort to make it harder to access the abortion drug mifepristone, ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration's mifepristone approval actions.

The court said the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine failed to prove they suffered any harm from the FDA's mifepristone policies and so had no right to sue in federal court to block access to the drug.

"Here, the plaintiff doctors and medical associations are unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA's regulation of others," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the court's opinion. "Specifically, FDA's regulations apply to doctors prescribing mifepristone and to pregnant women taking mifepristone. But the plaintiff doctors and medical associations do not prescribe or use mifepristone. And FDA has not required the plaintiffs to do anything or to refrain from doing anything."

Kavanaugh wrote that the plaintiffs' claim they were seeking to make mifepristone harder for people to because "they are pro-life, oppose elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others" isn't enough for legal standing to sue in federal court.

The justices rejected the plaintiffs' argument that easy availability of mifepristone constitutes a conscience injury under federal law.

"Given the broad and comprehensive conscience protections guaranteed by federal law, the plaintiffs have not shown-and cannot show-that FDA's actions will cause them to suffer any conscience injury," the Supreme Court opinion said.

The court concluded that, "The plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that FDA's relaxed regulatory requirements likely would cause them to suffer an injury in fact. For that reason, the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs' concerns about FDA's actions."

The court opinion said plaintiffs may present their concerns and objections to the President and the FDA, or to Congress in the legislative process.

While the decision was made on what could be described as a legal technicality, the court stressed that "No principle is more fundamental to the judiciary's proper role in our system of government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies."

The Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Appeals Court for the Fifth Circuit opinion on mifepristone.

According to the Supreme Court filing, the FDA relaxed some mifepristone restrictions in 2016, deeming it safe to terminate pregnancies up to 10 weeks.

In 2019 the FDA approved generic mifepristone. And in 2021 the FDA said it would no longer enforce a requirement for an in-person doctor visit requirement to access the drug.

The Supreme Court ruling left the FDA's policies intact.