Tonight in Your Rights: A shadow docket surprise
Justice Samuel Alito restores access by mail to an abortion drug nationwide. Also: Jeanine Pirro wants to 86 a ruling quashing Jerome Powell's subpoena.
A shadow docket ruling authored by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Monday has restored access to the abortion pill mifepristone across the United States.
If that sentence surprises you, there are a few important points of context to note:
Alito’s emergency docket order, known as an administrative stay, holds only for a week before expiring on Monday, May 11 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Supreme Court’s order pauses a ruling from the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which blocked access to mifepristone by mail.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit’s three-judge panel, comprised entirely of Republican-appointed jurists, granted the state of Louisiana’s application to block the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation allowing remote dispensing of mifepristone, a drug that has come to be used in roughly two-thirds of abortions in the United States since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t extend Alito’s stay by next week, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling will block access to the drug for anyone who doesn’t pick up a prescription in person, creating potentially massive hurdles for survivors of domestic violence, people with disabilities and those living in rural areas to fill subscriptions.
Tonight’s legal roundup starts off with a breakdown of the implications of this order, including an interview featuring analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union’s senior staff attorney Julia Kaye.
Below the paywall:
* More on the mifepristone litigation.
* Pirro wants to 86 an adverse ruling over a Fed subpoena.
* Video conversations with Brian Tyler Cohen and fascism scholar Ruth Ben Ghiat.
