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Sean D. Reyes
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AG Reyes and 23-State Coalition Urge the 5th Circuit to Uphold the Right to Regulate Abortion

May 12, 2023

Today Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes and 22 other Attorneys General filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in the case of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

The Attorneys General argue that the Biden Administration and the FDA’s attempt to roll back safety mechanisms for the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone and to make it widely available through the mail violates both federal law and state laws. Current federal criminal law plainly prohibits the distribution of abortion-inducing drugs through the mail. (18 U.S.C. § § 1461, 1462) 

As the Attorneys General wrote, “The FDA was not following a congressional mandate or responding to changed circumstances on mifepristone’s safety in promoting a new mail-order abortion regime. Rather, the agency was acting at the behest of the current Administration and its allies who demanded action after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.”

They continue, “The Administration claims that it has the power to make abortion drugs broadly accessible despite contrary determinations by States and despite laws that States have enacted to protect life, health, and safety in the use of those drugs. That claim is wrong.”

Previously in this case, Justice Samuel Alito noted in his dissent on the Application for Stay before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 21, 2023, “Our granting of a stay of a lower-court decision is an equitable remedy. It should not be given if the moving party has not acted equitably, and that is the situation here. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has engaged in what has become the practice of leveraging district court injunctions ‘as a basis’ for implementing a desired policy while evading both necessary agency procedures and judicial review.”

Attorneys General from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming joined General Reyes on this brief.  

Read the amicus brief here.