By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and REBECCA BOONE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has asked a judge to toss out a lawsuit from three Republican-led states seeking to cut off telehealth access to the abortion medication mifepristone.
Justice Department attorneys on Monday stayed the legal course charted by the Biden administration, though they didn’t directly weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the drug, which is part of the nation’s most common method of abortion.
Rather, the government argued the states don’t have the legal right, or standing, to sue.
“The states are free to pursue their claims in a district where venue is proper, but the states’ claims before this court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command,” federal government attorneys wrote.
The lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri argues that the Food and Drug Administration should roll back access to mifepristone. They filed their complaint after the Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone last year. They want the FDA to prohibit telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone, require three in-office visits and restrict the point in a pregnancy when it can be used.
The case is being considered in Texas by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee who once ruled in favor of halting approval for the drug.
Kacsmaryk’s original ruling came in a lawsuit filed by anti-abortion groups. It was narrowed by an appeals court before being tossed out by the Supreme Court, which found the plaintiffs lacked the legal right to sue.
The three states later moved to revive the case, arguing they did have legal standing because access to the drug undermined their abortion laws.
But the Department of Justice attorneys said the states can’t just piggyback on the earlier lawsuit as a way to keep the case in Texas.
Nothing is stopping the states from filing the lawsuit someplace else, attorney Daniel Schwei wrote, but the venue has to have some connection to the claims being made.
Besides, Schwei wrote, the states are challenging actions the FDA took in 2016, when it first loosened restrictions on mifepristone. That’s well past the six-year time limit to sue, he said.
Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in Idaho. Missouri had a strict ban, but clinics recently began offering abortions again after voters approved a new constitutional amendment for reproductive rights. Abortion is generally legal up to 22 weeks in Kansas, where voters rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure in 2022, though the state does have age restrictions.
Trump told Time magazine in December he would not restrict access to abortion medication. On the campaign trail, the Republican said abortion is an issue for the states and stressed that he appointed justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority when striking down the national right to abortion in 2022.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on abortion seems to have shifted at times, drawing criticism from both abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion forces. During his first confirmation hearing in January, he repeatedly said, “I have always believed abortion is a tragedy,” when pressed about his views.
Mifepristone is usually used in combination with a second drug for medication abortion, which has accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
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