The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld West Virginia's law banning FDA-approved medication abortion, marking the first federal court to sanction such a ban and undermining the FDA's regulatory authority.
The Executive's bid to vanquish so-called "universal injunctions" is, at bottom, a request for this Court's permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says "do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct," what it is truly seeking is an unfettered ability to act without judicial restraint.
"The problems with this approach: it undermines the adversarial process, creates a fairness problem, and deprives the parties of a meaningful opportunity to address-and potentially correct-issues pivotal to the court's ultimate determination."