Three Republican-led states can go forward with their lawsuit that seeks to restrict the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone, a judge ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, ruled that Idaho, Missouri and Kansas can continue their case against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in his court, where they last year joined a lawsuit originally brought by anti-abortion groups and doctors.
Those original plaintiffs dropped their case after the U.S. Supreme Court found they did not have legal standing to challenge the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone.
The FDA had argued that the states’ claims should be dismissed because, with the original plaintiffs gone, they had no connection to Kacsmaryk’s court.
Mifepristone has been approved by the FDA since 2000 for use along with another drug, misoprostol, to terminate pregnancy. Medication abortion accounts for a majority of abortions in the United States.
In their 2022 lawsuit, the newly formed Texas group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and other abortion opponents sought to have mifepristone pulled from the market altogether. In April 2023, they won an order from Kacsmaryk granting the request, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding it was too late to challenge the original approval.