Judge in abortion pill case tried to delay making hearing date public
The federal judge in a closely watched lawsuit that seeks to overturn federal approval of a widely used abortion pill has scheduled the first hearing in the case for this week, but he planned to delay making the public aware of it, according to people familiar with the case.
Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, of the Northern District in Texas, told lawyers in the case Friday that he was scheduling the hearing for Wednesday morning. However, he asked them not to disclose that information and said he would not enter it into the public court record until late Tuesday evening.
Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who has written critically about Roe v. Wade and previously worked for a Christian conservative legal organization, told lawyers Friday that he did not want the March 15 hearing to be “disrupted,” and that he wanted all parties involved to share their points in an orderly fashion, according to people familiar with the discussion.
The judge also said that court staff had faced security issues and that the measure was intended to keep the court proceedings safe.
The lawsuit, filed in November against the Food and Drug Administration by a coalition of anti-abortion groups, seeks to end more than 20 years of legal use of medications for abortion. The plaintiffs have asked the judge to issue a preliminary injunction ordering the FDA to withdraw its approval of mifepristone.
At the hearing, lawyers representing the plaintiffs, the FDA and a manufacturer of mifepristone will present arguments for and against an injunction. Such an order would be unprecedented, legal experts say, and — if higher courts were to allow an injunction to stand — would make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where they are legal, not just in those trying to restrict it.