Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected an effort by anti-abortion activists to rescind the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, holding that the activists lacked legal standing to challenge the determination made by federal regulators that the pill was safe and effective for use.
Now, a group of Republican-led states is seeking to revive the case, claiming that their respective state bans on abortion are being undermined by the nationwide mail-order availability of the abortion pill. If these states can convince the lower courts that they possess the requisite legal standing to sue, their case against mifepristone could easily end up back before the Supreme Court.
The case is Missouri v. FDA. After the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which said that anti-abortion groups and activists "do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities," the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho crafted their own updated legal challenge, which focused on the alleged harms suffered by the states themselves. This strategy was concocted for the purpose of passing muster under the rationale of the Court's 2024 decision.
