A coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on May 4, 2026, urging the Court to continue and expand a stay of the Fifth Circuit's ruling that would reimpose in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone [1]. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong filed a separate brief the same day making substantially similar arguments [1]. Both filings landed ahead of a May 11 deadline for the Court to act on the stay question [1].
The Fifth Circuit ruling at issue, arising from Louisiana v. FDA, would restore restrictions on mail-order and pharmacy dispensing of mifepristone that the Food and Drug Administration had previously relaxed [2]. The coalition, led by the attorneys general of New York, California, Massachusetts, and Washington, argued that the Fifth Circuit's decision lacks support in law or science and, if allowed to take effect nationwide, would create regulatory instability for a drug that has been FDA-approved since 2000 [1][2]. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and New York Attorney General Letitia James were among the signatories to the multistate brief [2]. Tong's separate brief advanced parallel arguments, contending that states with laws protecting access to reproductive care would face direct harm if the restrictions took effect pending further review [1].
The filings arrive in the post-Dobbs legal landscape, where federal and state courts have faced repeated challenges to the FDA's authority to approve and regulate abortion medications without state-by-state sign-off. The coalition argued that federal regulatory uniformity under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act preempts the kind of access restrictions the Fifth Circuit endorsed, and that allowing the lower-court ruling to stand would disrupt dispensing chains already operating under the FDA's current framework [1][2].
With the May 11 deadline approaching, the Supreme Court faces a binary near-term choice: continue the stay in some form, or allow the Fifth Circuit's restrictions to take effect while the underlying merits are litigated. The breadth of the coalition, spanning both large and smaller states, signals that any ruling the Court issues will carry immediate operational consequences for pharmacies and health systems across multiple jurisdictions. No merits briefing schedule has been publicly announced.
Comments (0)