The judge who ruled that medication abortion must remain available in some states was Thomas Owen Rice

Kacsmaryk v. Resneck: The Case that Legalized Abortion was Defended by the US Attorney General and the Attorney General

The Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion unleashed a political environment that pushed the legal envelope. After Friday night’s decisions, judges are being asked to sort out the conflicting commands of the decisions and return the issue to the Supreme Court.

The Danco company filed a notice of appeal on the behalf of the Justice Department and they were involved in defending the approval. In a statement, the Attorney General said they will seek to stay the ruling while the appeal goes forward, and that Danco would do the same.

Whereas Kacsmaryk had been asked by the challengers in Texas to block medication abortion, US District Judge Thomas Owen Rice, who sits in Spokane, Washington, was considering whether abortion pills should be easier to obtain.

Jack Resneck Jr., the president of the American Medical Association, said in a statement that Kacsmaryk’s ruling “flies in the face of science and evidence and threatens to upend access to a safe and effective drug.”

Kacsmaryk, whose anti- abortion advocacy before joining the bench was documented by a recent Washington Post profile, is against the use of medications in most abortions in the United States.

He said the FDA’s refusal to impose certain restrictions on the drug’s use “resulted in many deaths and many more severe or life-threatening adverse reactions.”

“Whatever the numbers are, they likely would be considerably lower had FDA not acquiesced to the pressure to increase access to chemical abortion at the expense of women’s safety,” he said.

The court ignores scientific facts and ignores ideological assertions that will cause harm to our patients and undermine the nation’s health, according to the president of the American Medical Association.

The judge wrote that a ruling in the challengers favor would ensure that women and girls are protected from unnecessary harm and that defendants don’t disregard federal law.

As he explained why the preliminary injunction – which was being handed down before the case could proceed to a trial – was justified, he said that embryos had their own rights that could be part of the analysis. That assertion goes farther than what the Supreme Court said in its June ruling, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

“Parenthetically, said ‘individual justice’ and ‘irreparable injury’ analysis also arguably applies to the unborn humans extinguished by mifepristone — especially in the post-Dobbs era,” Kacsmaryk said Friday.

They had asked Rice to remove certain restrictions – known as REMS or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy – the FDA has imposed on mifepristone, with the blue states arguing the drug was safe and effective enough to make those restrictions unnecessary.

While Rice is rejecting that bid for now, he granted a request the states also made that the FDA be ordered to keep the drugs on the market. Rice does not apply his ruling to the 17 states and the District of Columbia.

They’re appealing to the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is sometimes said to be the country’s most conservative appeals court. Legal scholars were not sure if the 5th Circuit would allow Ka cmsaryk to effect his order.

The 9th Circuit is a liberal appeals court and is covered by the blue states lawsuit. The ruling from Rice is not known if it will be appealed. Garland said the Justice Department was still reviewing the decision out of Washington. A so-called circuit split would increase the odds that the Supreme Court would intervene. But given how the practical impact of the two district court rulings contradict each other, the Supreme Court may have no choice but to get involved.

The lawyer for the challengers in the Texas case, anti-abortion medication associations and doctors, said Friday evening that he had not reviewed the Washington decision, so he could not weigh in on how it impacted Kacsmaryk’s order that the drug’s approval be halted.

Baptist, who is an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, said that he was not sure whether there was a direct conflict with the Washington state decision or not. I’m not sure that it is necessary to make that conclusion, if there is a direct conflict: it may be inevitably going to the Supreme Court.

First Impact of the 2011-2012 Mexican-American v. State Counties Cases: A High-Energy Interpretation of a Case of First Impressions

In recent weeks, Rice has presided over cases related to a federal firearm offense, assault of a federal officer with a deadly weapon, and fraudulently obtained Covid-19 relief funds.

The case was brought by the organization after they said the administration had failed in their battle to get the grants back.

“The existing record, undisputed in all material respects, supports only one rational conclusion: that under the totality of the circumstances, City Council elections are not ‘equally open to participation’ by Latino voters,” Rice said in his 2014 Montes v. City of Yakima decision. “The numbered post system, with its effective majority vote requirement, places Latino voters at a steep mathematical disadvantage, even when their voting strength is perfectly optimized.”

Rice said during his confirmation hearing that he would view higher court decisions differently than as a judge.

Rice was also asked which sources and guiding principles he would use in deciding cases of first impression if there were no controlling precedents that “dispositively concluded an issue” before him.

The judge turned to the plain meaning of the statute’s words. “If necessary, I would seek to determine the context and intent of Congress. I would look to cases from the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for guidance. If no other similar cases were available, I would consult other federal court decisions that considered the issue or like issues.”