Supreme Court keeps FDA abortion pill rules in place while considering court challenge

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Friday it was temporarily keeping in place federal rules for use of an abortion drug, while it takes time to more fully consider the issues raised in a court challenge.

In an order signed by Justice Samuel Alito, the court asked both sides to weigh in by Tuesday over whether lower court rulings restricting the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug, mifepristone, should be allowed to take effect while the case works its way through federal courts. The order suggests the court will decide that issue by late Wednesday.

The justices are being asked at this point only to determine what parts of an April 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, as modified by an appellate ruling Wednesday, can be in force while the case continues.

The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the pill, asked the justices to intervene.

The type of order issued by the court Friday, an administrative stay, ordinarily is not an indication of what the justices will do going forward.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

The Biden administration and a drug manufacturer asked the Supreme Court on Friday to preserve access to an abortion drug free from restrictions imposed by lower court rulings, while a legal fight continues.

The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories both warned of “regulatory chaos” and harm to women if the high court doesn’t block an appeals court ruling in a case from Texas that had the effect of tightening Food and Drug Administration rules under which the drug, mifepristone, can be prescribed and dispensed.

The new limits would take effect Saturday unless the court acts before then.

“This application concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote Friday, less than two days after the appellate ruling.