State of Louisiana v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration

CASE UPDATE — MAY 2, 2026: A company that manufactures mifepristone filed an emergency motion in the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to immediately block the Fifth Circuit’s May 1 decision reinstating a medically unnecessary, nationwide in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone while the Supreme Court considers the company's request to reverse the Fifth Circuit's decision altogether. The Fifth Circuit's ruling granted Louisiana’s extraordinary request to reinstate a nationwide requirement, lifted by FDA in 2021, that patients obtain mifepristone in person at a health center, rather than by mail or at a pharmacy after receiving care through telemedicine, while Louisiana’s appeal proceeds.

The appellate court’s order overrides a lower court’s ruling earlier this month pausing the case while the Trump administration conducts a FDA review that is itself a thinly veiled attempt to lay the groundwork for additional medically unjustified restrictions on mifepristone. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that Louisiana v. FDA should not move forward because the FDA has already undertaken a new review of its regulations on mifepristone. At no point in the brief did the DOJ defend the merits of the FDA’s evidence-based decision to allow mifepristone patients to fill their prescription by mail and at pharmacies, the issue at the core of the case.

More than 1 in 4 people in the U.S. who have an abortion today do so using telemedicine. If a federal court grants Louisiana’s request to impose restrictions on telemedicine, patients will no longer be able to fill their mifepristone prescription by mail or at a pharmacy being evaluated and counseled by a health care provider through telemedicine. Instead, patients all across the country—including in states where abortion is legally protected—will be required to pick up the pill in person at a hospital, clinic, or medical office, even when they have already received care through telemedicine and there is no medical reason for the travel.

Without this method of care delivery, patients using mifepristone would be forced to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, to a health center just to pick up a pill, a requirement that leading medical authorities agree has no safety benefit. For some patients — especially people with low incomes, those living in rural areas, people with disabilities, younger people, and survivors of domestic violence — traveling to a clinic is an added barrier that can prevent them from getting an abortion altogether.

Mifepristone’s safety record has been confirmed by more than a hundred peer-reviewed studies and by leading medical authorities like the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Recent data show that, by June 2025, through more than 1 in 4 U.S. abortions were provided telemedicine using mifepristone.

Despite this scientific backing, in May 2025, the Trump administration announced that the FDA is conducting a new review of its mifepristone regulations, prompted by a debunked, self-published report from a Project 2025 sponsor. This report attacking mifepristone purposefully distorts the safety record of medication abortion and has been denounced by more than 260 expert researchers for its severe scientific flaws.