(CNN) — The abortion rights community and its allies in the Biden administration won a stunning victory for the conservative Supreme Court with an order Friday night that halted restrictions on medications used for abortion from taking effect.
The brief, unsigned Supreme Court order came in an emergency dispute over lower court rulings that would have restricted access to the drug. mifepristona. At the request of the Department of Justice and a manufacturer of mifepristone, the higher court has stayed the lower court’s rulings while the appeals proceed.
Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly expressed their disagreement with the Supreme Court’s measure.
Here’s what you need to know about the US Supreme Court’s move.
What did the Supreme Court do this Friday?
The Supreme Court handed a victory to abortion drug advocates by stopping lower court rulings that would have cut off access to the drug as a result of a lawsuit by anti-abortion doctors seeking to remove its approval two decades ago from the US Administration. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to mifepristone.
That means the FDA’s current regulatory scheme around the drug remains in place, ensuring that access to medical abortion, in states where it’s legal, is maintained for at least the next two weeks, and probably longer.
How did we get here?
This Friday’s order is the latest dramatic twist in the lawsuit that was filed in November. Legal discharges spiked two weeks ago, when U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former President Donald Trump appointee, issued a ruling that would have halted FDA approval of the drug in 2000.
The dispute came to the door of the Supreme Court after the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit intervened last week and stayed the parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling that would have stayed approval without upsetting Kacsmaryk’s decision to stop. also subsequent efforts by the FDA to make the drug easier to obtain.
Had the Supreme Court not intervened in the way the Biden administration had requested, the 5th Circuit order would have placed restrictions on how the abortion drug could be used. Those limits would have shortened the gestation period in which the drug is available and would have required patients to obtain the drugs in person from their provider and make two other clinic visits as part of the protocol.
What comes next in the case?
Much remains to be resolved in the litigation, and Friday’s Supreme Court order is unlikely to be the judges’ final word on the FDA’s approach to regulating the drug.
The case now returns to the Fifth Circuit, which has established a schedule of expedited briefings to provide a fuller review of the Kacsmaryk ruling. A three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit will hold a hearing on May 17 and issue another decision shortly thereafter. (There is no deadline for the 5th Circuit to decide.)
Most of the Fifth Circuit judges are conservative, but it is unknown who the three judges will be. In particular, the three judges who will hear that step of the appeal will likely be different from those who issued the appeal order last week.
Friday’s order from the Supreme Court maintains the status quo around drug regulations until the Fifth Circuit proceeding unfolds and until the justices have another opportunity to weigh in on how it handled the case.
What do we know about how the judges are thinking about the dispute?
The Supreme Court did not show its letters in the order it issued this Friday night.
Although Justices Thomas and Alito made their dissents public, it is unclear how the justices voted or what the exact vote count was. The support of five judges is required for the court to grant a stay.
Only Alito further wrote to explain his disagreement, stressing that he was not expressing any opinion on the merits of whether the FDA violated the law in the way mifepristone was addressed.
Instead, he voiced his complaints about how the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been criticized for handling emergency disputes, in its so-called shadow docket, in the past. He also cast doubt on the government’s and manufacturer’s claims that the Fifth Circuit’s order would have caused a massive disruption of access to the drug.
