Supreme Court Upholds Broad Access to Abortion Pill Mifepristone | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court Upholds Broad Access to Abortion Pill Mifepristone

nytimes.com

58 pointsAmorymeltzer30 comments

It would have been wild if they'd let this one continue with standing, since this is the case where the people suing were a bunch of anti-abortion doctors whose argument for how they were harmed was that they might hypothetically have to treat a patient whose abortion had caused complications. They didn't give any examples of this having happened. The remedy they wanted was that nobody should be allowed to use or prescribe this drug.

Yeah the 5th Circuit was giving standing on hypothetical issues.

However since states were allowed to join the case in district court, they may raise the issue again and be judged to have standing.

Note that the court didn't decide the case on its merits; they said the parties had a lack of standing.

Is there any chance that another party with standing will bring a similar case?

Not to jinx it, but it seems unlikely. You'd think anyone with a leg to stand on would've come forward already (or been sought out by the plaintiff) for this suit.

I think they’re saying they’ll change the argument, not find people to support it.

E: I love how I’m always wrong about law, even when it sounds simple…

  [other claimants that we expect to try again] were able to intervene as plaintiffs at the lower court level

This isn't always the case, but you're right it's pretty odd to go through with this case on such shaky ground. It's almost surely because they couldn't find anyone better, many of these cases wait until you find the perfect plantiff and it can take a lot of time/money searching.

They would have to be in a very sympathetic court to get the ruling they want given the harm they're trying to demonstrate. It makes no sense that medical procedures should be banned because other doctors might be asked to treat complications. That's how literally every medical intervention works.

Yeah, that reasoning would have crazy implications. No one's allowed to get surgery anymore because you might catch MRSA while you're recovering in the hospital afterwards... no medication because you might have a side effect or allergic reaction....

Yes.

"[Erin Hawley, one of the group's lawyers] is hopeful the underlying lawsuit can continue because three states -- Idaho, Missouri and Kansas -- have brought their own claims and have different arguments for standing"

This a bigger question than you’ll get an answer to on a forum I fear, but I may be pessimistic. Ultimately this court is somewhat infamous for their recent decisions on standing, especially when striking down Roe.

My expert lawyer friend who’s never been known to just make stuff up, Mr. GPT esq., suggests that the primary culprits would be injured patients, consumer advocacy groups on behalf of injured patients, or competitors alleging unfair approval processes. Otherwise… I mean, theoretically, a priest could bring a suit on the grounds of “the presence of abortion in my country will make god angry with me” and win, with the right judges to hear them out…

I don't recall an outcry about standing when Dobbs was decided (and as a lawyer, I am attuned to such things). Looking at the wikipedia page for Dobbs, [1] there's hardly a mention of it. Perhaps you're thinking of the student loan forgiveness cases, which raised this question?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_Hea...

Thanks for the quick correction! You are, of course, completely correct.

Sadly, this is still a notable outcome. Especially given how other cases have been brought before the current Supreme Court by entities who didn't have standing (they were fighting the court cases based on hypothetical scenarios) obtained favorable rulings.

The supreme court resolves questions, not cases. They resolve how the law can and should be interpreted, and then the courts decide the case with the Supreme Court's reading of the law.

This is untrue and creates a false dichotomy. The Supreme Court does resolve cases, and the manner in which they do so is by resolving legal questions.

This is true in some other countries where a high court (sometimes called a constitutional court) is often tasked with deciding the legitimacy of a law, the allowable scope of its application, etc, outside the context of a particularized, concrete dispute involving claims of actual or imminent harm or loss. (Often the context is settling a speculative dispute of authority between government branches.) Sometimes that might be the highest court's only job. That is definitely not how the United States Supreme Court operates, though some US state supreme courts will hear and issue opinions on purely abstract legal questions, especially if submitted by the legislature or some other office given special privileges.

Sounds like excellent institutional procedure -- can you point to documentation that that is indeed the intended process?

It made sense to declare that it lacks standing, but this case shouldn't even have been before the court - imagine if you could just say "Oh, I decided Jim Smith owes me a billion dollars" with no justification and somehow the US Supreme Court thinks they need to hear that to see if they should intervene, rather than tell you to fuck off.

The court never needed to even hear this, increasingly a GOP-controlled court wants to take every opportunity to see if there's some sliver of a reason why they can meddle in the business of other government entities, and isn't interested in boring minutiae of actual legal decisions.

A hundred years ago, a season of US Supreme Court decisions might have one political hot potato and most of the rest of its work is boring technical decisions which are building a sophisticated legal framework that can be used in lower courts to explain how things need to work. This is useful (but not very exciting) work, well suited to an actual independent final court with more than ten very knowledgeable judges and nothing else to fill their days. My favourite example from the UK's Supreme Court, they decided what sort of crime could possibly deserve a punishment of imprisonment without possibility of parole - they decided it should be multiple distinct murders, such as if you were a serial killer or you killed somebody and then when you were paroled for that you decided to kill the people who caught you the first time as well.

But today the US Supreme Court barely finds any time for such things, those don't generate "buzz" and get you another free luxury vacation from a "close friend" who didn't know you until you mattered. Now it's "Can we find an excuse to fuck with Biden?" and "Is there a way to give my 'friend' what he wants?" with the result that of course the general public increasingly no longer see the Rule Of Law as a good thing in the US.

I have a feeling that a good number of the present US Supreme Court, maybe even a majority, would have William Roper's side of the argument in "A Man For All Seasons". Roper argues that "I'd cut down every law in England to [catch the devil]" and More asks what he'd do when the Devil turns on him, as would inevitably happen, where would he hide, with no law?

This was a long shot for the plaintiffs, even with this SC, because a ruling for them would have “fucked with the money” in a big way.

[edit] not to say this drug is safe from court interference, but they’ll need an angle of attack that doesn’t result in enormous amounts of risk for all drug makers of all drugs if they win—I’m not sure how they’ll manage that.

Link to decision: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf

https://archive.is/1kn8A

Why did the Supreme Court accept the case in the first place, it's a bit confusing. I guess they are signaling that they are willing to ban abortion drugs if a proper case comes up?

If anything the opposite -- the lower court had ruled that the organization _did_ have standing to challenge the approval of mifepristone, and the Supreme Court overruled that.

If they had done nothing then that would have _reduced_ access to mifepristone by rolling back the FDA's expansions (that is, the requirement for in-person doctor's consultation would have been reinstated)

Seriously. Yet another case of NYT's hypersensationalism gravely misleading their own flock. There's been no "upholding" here, the opinion straight up states the plaintiffs should pursue their goal through state legislatures. With the combination of Dobbs and the longstanding criminalization of personal chemistry, I don't know that such a case would even need to make it to the Supreme Court.

This whole topic is rife with self-defeating nonsense. I personally used to think abortion should be an issue left up to the states, in part due to the common "pro choice" messaging - if it's a choice, and people feel so strongly about it, why shouldn't regulation of that choice be left up to the states? Then life happens and you see that most of this topic, especially all those abhorrent-sounding later-term strawmen that get trotted out, really has nothing to do with any semblance of choice. Rather it's mostly about religious fundamentalists playing duality-make-believe that a non-viable fetus is still somehow an abstract "person", and then pushing their fantasy onto everyone else.

I'd love to see the whole topic reframed. If a state bans elective abortions of normal pregnancies after a certain specific amount of development, that's fine. And in fact, as far as I can tell most (probably all) states already do this! But there is absolutely no rationale to laws like Texas's, which are essentially just a superstitious attack on what is otherwise straightforward medical care.

They are desperately trying to regain trust by appearing impartial

While hobnobbing with billionaires and saying the unspeakable thing aloud: their secret desires to turn America into Gilead.

John Oliver still has a million dollars and a brand new luxury RV for Judge Thomas should he so choose to do the honorable thing.

Also, Judge Alito should resign given his inability to remain impartial and desire for a Christian theocracy in violation the 1st. a. What a disgrace.

Why is a news article about a 44 year old drug on Hacker News?

As far as I can tell this isn't about tech, tech policy, a new medication, a new discovery about an old medication, science, etc. Seems like its just fodder for a political debate that is unrelated to this site.

Instead of politicizing HN, why don't you just toot this to your echo chamber on Mastodon?

This is a trend I’ve noticed that’s increasing. It suggests HN audience is changing as it grows.

Probably because this case can have a lot of impact on HN readers lives. But I agree with you it's definitely out of scope, and seems to have been flagged already.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com