A Texas federal judge late Tuesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration seeking to sharply restrict the abortion pill mifepristone, instead transferring the case to Missouri and keeping the effort alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Idaho, Missouri and Kansas \u2014 which were not the original plaintiffs \u2014 have no ties to Amarillo, Texas, where the original lawsuit was filed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But instead of dismissing the case outright, Kacsmaryk transferred it to the Eastern District of Missouri \u201cin the interest of justice.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The red states did not file their own lawsuit but were allowed by Kacsmaryk<\/u><\/a> to intervene and file a complaint in the case that was originally brought in 2022 by a group of anti-abortion activists and doctors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kacsmaryk wrote that if he dismissed the case, the plaintiffs would have to start at \u201csquare one,\u201d and sever any connection between the red states and the original plaintiffs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, the Supreme Court dismissed the original lawsuit<\/u><\/a>, ruling private parties had no legal basis to challenge access to mifepristone. The justices found the conservative doctors in the lawsuit did not show they had personally been harmed by the government\u2019s actions regulating mifepristone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling on the case didn\u2019t address the underlying regulatory or safety issues and instead decided the case only on standing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The states in their complaint claimed that some Food and Drug Administration\u2019s (FDA) actions to loosen access to mifepristone allowed the pills to flood across their borders, endangering the lives of women and undermining their anti-abortion laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n