Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court explaining that courts have the express power to postpone the effective date of a federal agency’s action when that action is being challenged in court.
Nearly two decades ago, the Population Council—a nonprofit founded to combat alleged “overpopulation”—filed a new drug application with the Food and Drug Administration for mifepristone, “part of a two-drug regimen designed to cause abortion.” FDA approved the drug under an expedited approval process, putting certain restrictions on chemical abortions in place in the meantime. In 2002, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (Alliance) submitted a petition to FDA challenging its approval of the drug as unsafe. FDA ignored the petition until 2016, 14 years later, when the Obama Administration rejected the petition and loosened its earlier restrictions on chemical abortions. In 2019, the Alliance filed another petition, which the FDA under the Biden Administration later denied. With no other options, the Alliance filed a lawsuit challenging the agency’s actions loosening many of the original restrictions it had imposed on the chemical abortion regimen and among other things, allowing chemical abortion drugs to be dispensed during mail.