U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a timeout Friday in the swirling legal battle over an abortion drug.
Alito issued an administrative stay after Texas federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone last Friday, April 7.
A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit, which Alito oversees, upheld part of Kacsmaryk’s nationwide injunction this week.
The Biden administration and the drug maker appealed to the Supreme Court for relief.
Alito’s stay gives the full Supreme Court until Wednesday to consider the matter.
Earlier Friday, Justice Department Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote that allowing the ruling to stand would affect women, the medical system, the FDA, and the public adversely.
“[It would] unleash regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” Prelogar wrote.
An attorney for Danco, maker of the drug, said the lower court ruling would “irreparably harm Danco, which will be unable to both conduct its business nationwide and comply with its legal obligations.”
The company said it would continue to manufacture and distribute the drug.
Mifepristone and other abortion drugs have become a bigger part of the abortion debate since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. The ruling, authored by Alito, allows states to decide on abortion access.
