Supreme Court justices suggested abortion opponents had other ways to seek stricter rules for abortion drugs in the court's unanimous ruling that rejected a group of anti-abortion organizations and doctors challenging current Food Administration regulations. and Medications for a widely used pill.
He wrote that under the Constitution, “a plaintiff's desire to make a drug less available to others does not establish standing to sue.”
He said the court would not adopt the legal theories the challengers were pushing, warning that “(that) road apparently would not end until virtually every citizen had the ability to challenge virtually every government action they don't like.”
The appeal had been vehemently rejected by the pharmaceutical industry, which warned that a ruling challenging regulations for mifepristone could open the door to legal challenges targeting all types of drugs.
Much of Kavanaugh's opinion covered the various legal thresholds that a plaintiff must meet for it to be appropriate for courts to intervene in a dispute.
Referring to anti-abortion doctors and medical groups who sued the federal government over the current regulatory regime for the drug, Kavanaugh wrote that the plaintiffs suffered neither the monetary damages nor the physical harms that could have established his position.
He noted that federal law already protects individual health care providers who object to performing abortions on moral grounds.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an agreement to raise other problems he had with the anti-abortion groups' continuing claims.
