The Supreme Court wrapped up its term at the beginning of July 2024 with a range of rulings that reshape everything from the power of the presidency to how federal agencies carry out their work.
One of the court’s most significant decisions was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
This ruling, at its core, determines the balance of power between the judiciary branch’s federal courts and the executive branch’s federal agencies.
Before the Supreme Court’s July ruling, courts deferred to those agency decisions. Now, in a reversal of 40 years of precedent, courts, not agencies, will have the last word on interpreting federal law.
Loper did not automatically reverse all agency determinations made over the past 40 years. But, going forward, Loper’s shift of power from federal agencies to the federal courts will have profound effects on many different policies and laws – including those that deal with abortion and reproductive rights.
Lawyers and scholars like me who study reproductive rights understand that federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, generally have the scientific and medical expertise necessary to set guidance for and implement effective, evidence-based reproductive health care policy.
For example, the FDA first approved mifepristone, one of the two drugs that can cause nonsurgical medical abortions, in 2000. The agency’s medical and scientific experts reviewed decades of evidence from clinical trials and highly technical scientific studies and found that the drug was safe and effective.
Here are three abortion and reproductive rights issues in which federal agency decision-making could be tested in the months and years to come.
The Supreme Court wrapped up its term at the beginning of July 2024 with a range of rulings that reshape everything from the power of the presidency to how federal agencies carry out their work.
One of the court’s most significant decisions was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
This ruling, at its core, determines the balance of power between the judiciary branch’s federal courts and the executive branch’s federal agencies.
Before the Supreme Court’s July ruling, courts deferred to those agency decisions. Now, in a reversal of 40 years of precedent, courts, not agencies, will have the last word on interpreting federal law.
A federal appeals court has rejected Tennessee’s attempt to collect millions of dollars in family planning funds without complying with federal rules requiring clinics to provide abortion referrals due to its current ban on the procedure
A New Hampshire resident has died from a rare mosquito-borne brain infection called Eastern equine encephalitis, health officials said on Tuesday, marking the state's first