The Trump administration on Monday revealed its opposition to an effort to restrict access to abortion pills in a legal brief that carried forward arguments made by the Biden administration.
Current Justice Department attorneys, like their predecessors, claim that a lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri against the Food and Drug Administration was filed in the wrong court and therefore must be dismissed or transferred.
“The states are free to pursue their claims in a district where venue is proper,” federal attorneys wrote, per The Associated Press.
As it stands, the case is in front of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Texas judge known for his opposition to abortion who blocked access to the abortion pill nationwide while hearing a related lawsuit.
“The next step in the (current) case will be for Judge Kacsmaryk to decide whether to dismiss it or allow it to proceed,” The New York Times reported.
Trump administration on abortion
The Trump administration’s Monday filing was surprising given that the Justice Department has abandoned many of the legal positions taken by the Biden administration in ongoing federal lawsuits.
The Trump administration has also undone many policies put in place under former President Joe Biden, including in the area of abortion rights.
But Monday’s filing does not necessarily mean that Trump’s team will work to protect access to the abortion pill, mifepristone, in the long term, as a legal expert told The New York Times.
The brief does not comment on the merits of the legal challenge from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri. Instead, it’s focused on concepts like venue and standing.
“I think the best way to read it is that they’re just buying time to figure out what to do about mifepristone,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and abortion law expert at the University of California, Davis, to the Times, noting that President Donald Trump may want to pause his administration’s push against abortion access until after the 2026 midterms.
Mifepristone lawsuits
The abortion pill lawsuit from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri grows out of a Supreme Court ruling from last year.
In June, the justices unanimously ruled that doctors challenging the FDA’s rules for mifepristone did not have legal standing to sue. The decision did not address the underlying claims about access to the drug, which is typically used in combination with misoprostol in at-home medication abortions.
State officials in Idaho, Kansas and Missouri essentially adopted the case from the doctors and reinvigorated their fight against mifepristone.
“The three states (argued) they did have legal standing because access to the drug undermined their abortion laws,” the AP reported.
The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, has questioned the states’ arguments on standing, explaining in its Monday filing that Idaho, Kansas and Missouri likely aren’t affected enough by the FDA’s mifepristone guidelines to be able to sue.
The Trump administration has asked Judge Kacsmaryk to dismiss the case.