Judge suspends approval of medication abortion pill
A Texas judge has temporarily suspended the state's approval of a medication abortion pill, but has delayed ruling for one week to allow for an appeal from the Department of Justice.
The federal judge who is overseeing the high profile challenge to FDA's approval of drugs to end a pregnancy, which has been in place for two decades, is a conservative jurist. He tends to side with plaintiffs seeking to rollback reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights as well as block important Biden administration policy.
US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk was confirmed in 2019 by the Senate with a vote of 52 to 46. He is an appointee from former President Donald Trump.
Abortion rights activists have been critical of the FDA case. It is the largest abortion-related lawsuit since the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade in 2013. Kacsmaryk's handling of the situation has also been criticized. Critics have taken issue with the unusual steps that he took in order to delay letting the public know about the hearing scheduled for March 15th.
Kacsmaryk has been on the bench since 2019. He's helped to make Texas a graveyard for the policies of President Joe Biden’s administration. This is largely because Texas' rules about how federal cases are allocated in the state allowed conservatives file there strategically. It almost guarantees that their complaints will go before sympathetic judges. Kacsmaryk receives every case that is filed under his division.
Jennifer Griffith, Kacsmaryk’s sister, recently spoke to The Washington Post about her brother's anti-abortion history and how, she believes, fate brought him the abortion case.
Griffith said, "I feel like this was his destiny." He is exactly where he should be.
Documents from the Texas Secretary of State's Office show that the group who brought the lawsuit against the drug abortion, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine incorporated in Amarillo just a few weeks before filing the suit.
Kacsmaryk, the only federal district court judge in the Amarillo Division of the US District Northern Texas is seated.