Late yesterday, a district court in Texas issued its much-anticipated ruling in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. Food and Drug Administration, a challenge to the FDA's approval of the abortion medication mifepristone, which has been on the market for over two decades. As some hoped and others feared, the court ruled against the FDA, concluding that mifepristone should not be an approved medication.
By an amazing coincidence, a second district court, this one in Washington State, issued its own ruling in a competing mifepristone lawsuit soon after the Texas decision, issuing an order barring the FDA from altering the status of mifepristone, at least in the plaintiff states. (Interestingly enough, this is not the only time we've seen dueling opinions on a high-profile health-law question issued on the same day. The same thing happened with Halbig v. Burwell and King v. Burwell in 2014, creating a circuit split in a matter or hours. Go figure.)
