Unanimous court preserves access to
widely used abortion medication
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court's first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The nine justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration's approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA's subsequent actions to ease access to it. The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, and after about six weeks of pregnancy in three others, often before women realize they're pregnant.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority to overturn Roe, wrote for the court on Thursday that "federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs' concerns about FDA's actions."
The opinion underscored the stakes of the 2024 election and the possibility that an FDA commissioner appointed by Republican Donald Trump, if he wins the White House, could consider tightening access to mifepristone, including prohibiting sending it through the mail.
Kavanaugh's opinion managed to unite a court deeply divided over abortion and many other divisive social issues by employing a minimalist approach that focused solely on the technical legal issue of standing and reached no judgment about the FDA's actions. Kavanaugh's seven "pro-life" references to abortion opponents may have been the only language in his opinion that revealed anything of his views on abortion.
While praising the decision, President Joe Biden signaled Democrats will continue to campaign heavily on abortion ahead of the November elections. "It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states," Biden said in a statement.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, expressed disappointment with the ruling, but trained her fire on Democrats. "Joe Biden and the Democrats are hell-bent on forcing abortion on demand any time for any reason, including DIY mail-order abortions, on every state in the country," Dannenfelser said.
About two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose banning the use of mifepristone, or medication abortion, nationwide, according to a KFF poll conducted in February. About one-third would support a nationwide ban.
The high court is separately considering another abortion case, about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals overrides state abortion bans in rare emergency cases in which a pregnant patient's health is at serious risk.
More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation.
Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
Biden's administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could undermine the FDA's drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency's scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.
The decision "safeguards access to a drug that has decades of safe and effective use," Danco spokeswoman Abigail Long said in a statement.
The plaintiffs in the mifepristone case, anti-abortion doctors and their organizations, argued in court papers that the FDA's decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and "jeopardize women's health across the nation."
Kavanaugh acknowledged what he described as the opponents' "sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA's relaxed regulation of mifepristone."
Federal laws already protect doctors from having to perform abortions, or give any other treatment that goes against their beliefs, Kavanaugh wrote. "The plaintiffs have not identified any instances where a doctor was required, notwithstanding conscience objections, to perform an abortion or to provide other abortion-related treatment that violated the doctor's conscience since mifepristone's 2000 approval," he wrote.
In the end, Kavanaugh wrote, the anti-abortion doctors went to the wrong forum and should instead direct their energies to persuading lawmakers and regulators to make changes.
Abortion rights advocates mainly breathed a sigh of relief after the decision, but they echoed Biden about the impact of the decision two years ago.
"In the end, this ruling is not a 'win' for abortion — it just maintains the status quo, which is a dire public health crisis in which 14 states have criminalized abortion," Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.
The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, which would have revoked the drug's approval entirely. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA's initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
The Supreme Court put the appeals court's modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded. But they, too, joined the court's opinion Thursday.
The push to restrict abortion pills likely won't stop with the Supreme Court's ruling, said the lawyer who represented anti-abortion doctors and their organizations in the case.
The decision that the doctors don't have the legal right to sue leaves open the way for lawsuits from others, including three other states that Kacsmaryk had previously allowed to join the case, said Erin Hawley, an attorney for the group Alliance Defending Freedom.
Hawley said she expects Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to continue the lawsuit originally filed in Texas.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, asserted in a statement that the states have "standing that the doctors did not," confirming that he will press ahead with the case in Kacsmaryk's court.
–––––
Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst and Linley Sanders contributed to this report.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court's first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The nine justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration's approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA's subsequent actions to ease access to it. The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, and after about six weeks of pregnancy in three others, often before women realize they're pregnant.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority to overturn Roe, wrote for the court on Thursday that "federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs' concerns about FDA's actions."
The opinion underscored the stakes of the 2024 election and the possibility that an FDA commissioner appointed by Republican Donald Trump, if he wins the White House, could consider tightening access to mifepristone, including prohibiting sending it through the mail.
Kavanaugh's opinion managed to unite a court deeply divided over abortion and many other divisive social issues by employing a minimalist approach that focused solely on the technical legal issue of standing and reached no judgment about the FDA's actions. Kavanaugh's seven "pro-life" references to abortion opponents may have been the only language in his opinion that revealed anything of his views on abortion.
While praising the decision, President Joe Biden signaled Democrats will continue to campaign heavily on abortion ahead of the November elections. "It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states," Biden said in a statement.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, expressed disappointment with the ruling, but trained her fire on Democrats. "Joe Biden and the Democrats are hell-bent on forcing abortion on demand any time for any reason, including DIY mail-order abortions, on every state in the country," Dannenfelser said.
About two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose banning the use of mifepristone, or medication abortion, nationwide, according to a KFF poll conducted in February. About one-third would support a nationwide ban.
The high court is separately considering another abortion case, about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at hospitals overrides state abortion bans in rare emergency cases in which a pregnant patient's health is at serious risk.
More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation.
Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
Biden's administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could undermine the FDA's drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency's scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.
The decision "safeguards access to a drug that has decades of safe and effective use," Danco spokeswoman Abigail Long said in a statement.
The plaintiffs in the mifepristone case, anti-abortion doctors and their organizations, argued in court papers that the FDA's decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and "jeopardize women's health across the nation."
Kavanaugh acknowledged what he described as the opponents' "sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA's relaxed regulation of mifepristone."
Federal laws already protect doctors from having to perform abortions, or give any other treatment that goes against their beliefs, Kavanaugh wrote. "The plaintiffs have not identified any instances where a doctor was required, notwithstanding conscience objections, to perform an abortion or to provide other abortion-related treatment that violated the doctor's conscience since mifepristone's 2000 approval," he wrote.
In the end, Kavanaugh wrote, the anti-abortion doctors went to the wrong forum and should instead direct their energies to persuading lawmakers and regulators to make changes.
Abortion rights advocates mainly breathed a sigh of relief after the decision, but they echoed Biden about the impact of the decision two years ago.
"In the end, this ruling is not a 'win' for abortion — it just maintains the status quo, which is a dire public health crisis in which 14 states have criminalized abortion," Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.
The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, which would have revoked the drug's approval entirely. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA's initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
The Supreme Court put the appeals court's modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded. But they, too, joined the court's opinion Thursday.
The push to restrict abortion pills likely won't stop with the Supreme Court's ruling, said the lawyer who represented anti-abortion doctors and their organizations in the case.
The decision that the doctors don't have the legal right to sue leaves open the way for lawsuits from others, including three other states that Kacsmaryk had previously allowed to join the case, said Erin Hawley, an attorney for the group Alliance Defending Freedom.
Hawley said she expects Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to continue the lawsuit originally filed in Texas.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, asserted in a statement that the states have "standing that the doctors did not," confirming that he will press ahead with the case in Kacsmaryk's court.
–––––
Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst and Linley Sanders contributed to this report.
California man can't trademark
'Trump too small'
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled against a man who wants to trademark the suggestive phrase "Trump too small."
The justices upheld the government's decision to deny a trademark to Steve Elster, a California man seeking exclusive use of the phrase on T-shirts and potentially other merchandise. It is one of several cases at the court relating to former President Donald Trump, including major cases related to the violent attack on the Capitol in 2021. Earlier this term, the court laid out standards for when public officials can be sued for blocking critics from their social media accounts. These cases were also related to Trump.
The Justice Department supported President Joe Biden's predecessor and presumptive opponent in the 2024 election. Government officials said the phrase "Trump too small" could still be used, just not trademarked because Trump had not consented to its use. Indeed, "Trump too small" T-shirts can already be purchased online.
Elster's lawyers had argued that the decision violated his free speech rights, and a federal appeals court agreed.
At arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts said that if Elster were to win, people would race to trademark "Trump too this, Trump too that."
Although all nine justices agreed in rejecting Elster's First Amendment claim, they used differing rationales that stretched over 53 pages of opinions.
Twice in the past six years, the justices have struck down provisions of federal law denying trademarks seen as scandalous or immoral in one case and disparaging in another.
Elster's case dealt with another measure calling for a trademark request to be refused if it involves a name, portrait or signature "identifying a particular living individual" unless the person has given "written consent."
The phrase at the heart of the case is a reference to an exchange Trump had during the 2016 presidential campaign with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who was then also running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Rubio began the verbal jousting when he told supporters at a rally that Trump was always calling him "little Marco" but that Trump — who says he is 6 feet and 3 inches tall — has disproportionately small hands. "Have you seen his hands? ... And you know what they say about men with small hands," Rubio said. "You can't trust them."
Trump then brought up the comment at a televised debate on March 3, 2016.
"Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands — if they're small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee you," he said.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled against a man who wants to trademark the suggestive phrase "Trump too small."
The justices upheld the government's decision to deny a trademark to Steve Elster, a California man seeking exclusive use of the phrase on T-shirts and potentially other merchandise. It is one of several cases at the court relating to former President Donald Trump, including major cases related to the violent attack on the Capitol in 2021. Earlier this term, the court laid out standards for when public officials can be sued for blocking critics from their social media accounts. These cases were also related to Trump.
The Justice Department supported President Joe Biden's predecessor and presumptive opponent in the 2024 election. Government officials said the phrase "Trump too small" could still be used, just not trademarked because Trump had not consented to its use. Indeed, "Trump too small" T-shirts can already be purchased online.
Elster's lawyers had argued that the decision violated his free speech rights, and a federal appeals court agreed.
At arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts said that if Elster were to win, people would race to trademark "Trump too this, Trump too that."
Although all nine justices agreed in rejecting Elster's First Amendment claim, they used differing rationales that stretched over 53 pages of opinions.
Twice in the past six years, the justices have struck down provisions of federal law denying trademarks seen as scandalous or immoral in one case and disparaging in another.
Elster's case dealt with another measure calling for a trademark request to be refused if it involves a name, portrait or signature "identifying a particular living individual" unless the person has given "written consent."
The phrase at the heart of the case is a reference to an exchange Trump had during the 2016 presidential campaign with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who was then also running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Rubio began the verbal jousting when he told supporters at a rally that Trump was always calling him "little Marco" but that Trump — who says he is 6 feet and 3 inches tall — has disproportionately small hands. "Have you seen his hands? ... And you know what they say about men with small hands," Rubio said. "You can't trust them."
Trump then brought up the comment at a televised debate on March 3, 2016.
"Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands — if they're small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee you," he said.
Court, siding with Starbucks, makes
it harder for NLRB to win court orders
in labor disputes
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday made it harder for the federal government to win court orders when it suspects a company of interfering in unionization campaigns in a case that stemmed from a labor dispute with Starbucks.
The justices tightened the standards for when a federal court should issue an order to protect the jobs of workers during a union organizing campaign.
The court unanimously rejected a rule that some courts had applied to orders sought by the National Labor Relations Board in favor of a higher threshold, sought by Starbucks, that must be met in most other fights over court orders, or injunctions.
The NLRB had argued that the National Labor Relations Act, the law that governs the agency, has for more than 75 years allowed courts to grant temporary injunctions if they find requests "just and proper." The agency said the law doesn't require it to prove other factors and was intended to limit the role of the courts.
Following the decision, Starbucks said, "Consistent federal standards are important in ensuring that employees know their rights and consistent labor practices are upheld no matter where in the country they work and live."
But Lynne Fox, president of the union representing the workers, said Starbucks should have dropped the case as part of its more conciliatory attitude toward union organizing efforts. "Working people have so few tools to protect and defend themselves when their employers break the law. That makes today's ruling by the Supreme Court particularly egregious," said Fox, president of Workers United.
The case began in February 2022, when Starbucks fired seven workers who were trying to unionize their Tennessee store. The NLRB obtained a court order forcing the company to rehire the workers while the case wound its way through the agency's administrative proceedings. Such proceedings can take up to two years.
A district court judge agreed with the NLRB and issued a temporary injunction ordering Starbucks to rehire the workers in August 2022. After the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, Starbucks appealed to the Supreme Court.
Five of the seven workers are still employed at the Memphis store, while the other two remain involved with the organizing effort, according to Workers United, the union organizing Starbucks workers. The Memphis store voted to unionize in June 2022.
As as the case proceeded, animosity between Workers United and Starbucks began to fade. The two sides announced in February that they would restart talks with the aim of reaching contract agreements this year, and they held their first bargaining session in nearly a year in late April.
Workers at 437 company-owned U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late 2021, according to the NLRB, but none of those stores has secured a labor agreement with Starbucks.
Starbucks said it's pursuing its goal reaching ratified contracts for those stores this year.
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