A federal judge in Texas has extended the deadline in a lawsuit seeking to revoke the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill to February 24.
On Thursday, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered Danco Laboratories, one of the pill’s manufacturers, to outline its opposition to the attempt to withdraw the medicine from the US market. The anti-abortion doctors who originally brought the lawsuit now have until February 24 to respond.
Abortion Drug Mifepristone
The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a group of anti-abortion physicians, sued the FDA in November over mifepristone’s more than two-decade-old approval.
The lawsuit, filed last year by a coalition of anti-abortion national medical associations and several doctors under the banner of the “Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine,” seeks a number of court actions, the most important of which is a preliminary and permanent injunction ordering the FDA to “remove Mifepristone and misoprostol as FDA-approved chemical abortion drugs and to withdraw defendants’ actions to deregulate these chemical abortion drugs.”
Last month, the FDA asked the judge to dismiss the application for a preliminary injunction, claiming that issuing one would “upend the status quo and the reliance interests of patients and clinicians who rely on Mifepristone, as well as businesses involved in Mifepristone distribution.”
A verdict against the agency would also set a hazardous precedent, according to the agency.
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Company Appeals
Danco, which manufactures Mifepristone, made a similar request to the FDA in a court document, stating that the litigation could bankrupt the company. Kacsmaryk was named to the court by then-President Trump in 2017 and approved by a vote of 52-46 in 2019.
Since then, he’s helped turn Texas into a legal graveyard for President Joe Biden’s administration’s policies, presiding over 95% of civil cases filed in Amarillo, Texas.
Kacsmaryk halted the Biden administration’s most recent attempt to discontinue the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program in December. He has also presided over Texas lawsuits challenging vaccine mandates, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s gender identity advice, and the administration’s restrictions on the use of Covid-19 relief monies for tax cuts.
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