In the not too distant future, after the single-party Theocracy has been permanently established, I could see the Holy Supreme Court rule that Thoughts and Prayers are the only acceptable medical treatment, and the new law that orders all doctors be sent to the camps is constitutional.
I exaggerate. I hope.
For now, the Supreme Court has allowed the FDA to continue to regulate mifepristone. The decision was unanimous, based around the fact that the plaintiffs did not have standing, having not proven any damages sustained
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out a challenge to the FDA’s rules for prescribing and dispensing abortion pills. By a unanimous vote, the court said the anti-abortion doctors who brought the challenge had failed to show they had been harmed, as they do not prescribe the medication, and thus, essentially, had no skin in the game.
Of course, that just means some dipshits are going to be looking for some other way to show standing.
At first I saw the headline that it was 9-0. I thought maybe Clarence Thomas was a real boy after all. But alas, it’s just a matter of standing. But how did the appeals court reason that the plaintiffs had standing?
With this Supreme Court, a punt is about the best we could have hoped for.
A court finding of no standing is basically never surprising, because it gives the court an opportunity to say “Go away”, without having to take any sort of stand on anything. It’s a very human trait to not want to have to do anything one might be held accountable for.
Exactly.
No one should take comfort from this ruling.
The door is wide open for another attack on medication abortion and any other drug the SCOTUS decides legislators should determine should not be allowed. Their ultimate goal is to take these decisions to partisan legislators who are pandering to certain of their Christian supporters and remove any role of medical expertise or non-partisan standards imposed by the FDA.
Me? I don’t want the likes of Matt Gaetz or Rand Paul or Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz in charge of decisions I or my loved ones may need to make in consultation with our doctors.
But that’s where we’re headed if Republicans ever, ever, ever get control over House, Senate and presidency. They’re just lying in wait.
AIUI, if there’s no standing, then a court must dismiss for that reason, do not pass “go”, do not collect $200. Because then moving on to the merit of the argument anyway would mean there’s no point in proving standing.
I’ve not read the decision, but my understanding is that the 5th Circuit is one of the most conservative of the circuits, so that probably factored into the decision.
Any minute now.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/04/abortion-pill-states-challenge-supreme-court/
The states have already made the case in court filings that they should be allowed to pursue a challenge in part because of what they describe as added public insurance costs for emergency medical care and mental health support because of complications from abortion pills. Missouri and Idaho officials say they have a separate interest in enforcing the state’s strict bans on abortion, which they say are undermined by the dispensing of abortion pills through the mail sent from states where the procedure is legal.
I agree w everything you wrote except this last bit.
They’re not lying in wait.
They’re in a full court, no holds barred, no rules obeyed, end-to-end, floor to ceiling press to hasten that day to the limits of their evil criminal ability.
True. But if there WERE cases of women harmed by the pill, the right-wingers would have already used them to file their case. It’s because there are two decades of safe use, and no clear cases of any remote harm from that use, that they had to resort to Doctors Offended That Some Women Get To Receive Health Care (Of A Kind That The Doctors Think They Should Not Get).
A shortcut of sorts may well be offered by a President Trump, who is quite likely to install an anti-science Christian Nationalist as head of the FDA. (Anyone willing to bet against that?)
Today’s non-ruling will be most significant for the use that Republicans will attempt to make of it: to show that ‘even the conservative justices defended your right to abortion, ladies, so Vote Republican this November!’ Look for it in their upcoming ads.
IDK, I think Trump or whoever could absolutely muck around enough with institutions that are supposed to be nonpartisan to make this distinction effectively moot if they want to.
I think this was an unambiguously good ruling personally, and I don’t really see any indication that there is a future where they will allow this to be challenged. Plus, they may want to set themselves up in the future if there are federal abortion bans passed by Republicans to say that the feds are allowed to regulate abortion meds.
Of course after Dobbs, good news like this is the faintest silver lining on a hurricane cloud.