The 9-0 decision handed down in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine gets overshadowed by the present tension. Political polarization, the worst in years, has affected all corners of the nation, even the Supreme Court. The rulings the conservative court has made this year have received lots of criticism, especially in overturning Roe v. Wade and in the recently decided Trump v. United States. We often forget that there was a unanimous decision just weeks ago, and the opinion is something I think we should celebrate. 

In this decision, the court sided with the FDA’s ability to regulate and distribute abortion pills. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA because they relaxed restrictions on “mifepristone,” a drug in these pills “used to end a pregnancy through ten weeks gestation.”

The Alliance’s suit arrived at the district court, which sided with their cause. The FDA then appealed this decision to the 5th District Court of Appeals, which partially agreed and partially disagreed with the Alliance’s cause. Shortly after, the Supreme Court granted the case, heard oral arguments on March 26, 2024, and issued their unanimous opinion on June 13th, siding with the FDA. This overturned both of the lower courts’ considerations. 

What’s so interesting about this case is that the legal arguments were irrelevant. Issuing the majority opinion, Justice Kavanaugh concluded that, under Article III, the plaintiffs (Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine) had no standing to sue. In order to sue, you have to have something to gain/lose from the court’s decision, and it was reasoned that the plaintiffs did not. 

The court, in the official opinion, confirmed that “the plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone. And FDA is not requiring them to do or refrain from doing anything. Rather, the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain. Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice. Therefore, the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge FDA’s actions.”

This gives us two interesting points. One, is the fact that all justices can get around this idea and preserve fairness, and two, the fact that the “if not us, who?” argument was nullified. 

No, the conservatives didn’t have a change of heart on abortion, as many falsely believe. More importantly, though, this case is not about conservatives or liberals, democrats or republicans, but preserving fairness and order in our justice system, preserving the fairness of when, and in what situations, someone may bring a suit to court. This is something I applaud, something that goes unrecognized in the current divisive political climate. 

Secondly, on this point, we find conservatism deeply rooted in this decision. It’s not about the conservative’s position on abortion, but their position on impartially interpreting the law. Conservatives, by nature, practice judicial restraint: they interpret the Constitution in its literal sense, in the way the founders originally wrote it. This means that they took Article III “down to the bones,” impartially determining that the Alliance had nothing to lose from the decision brought by the court. 

I think, with this decision, it’s clear that Thomas and the rest of the conservatives will favor the Constitution over conservative judicial activism. If there’s a constitutional, clear-cut consideration at stake, they would defer to the text rather than their ideologies. This might be helpful to recognize in the future. This is certainly something to praise. 

Then, we get to the “if not us, who?” argument that was used to establish the Alliance’s faulty standing. This seems like a logical argument, but all 9 justices reasoned it was a stretch. They took Article III for its literal meaning- you must have something to lose/gain from the decision brought down by the court. This is significant, and it deserves recognition. 

Sure, the Alliance might lose political clout, they might have moral, legal, or political concerns, but that doesn’t propose direct injury. The court recognized this, recognized the argument, and struck down their standing and the “if not us, who?” reasoning. 

The contentious cases get all the attention, especially in our current political climate. We need to celebrate cases like these, cases where fundamentally different justices with fundamentally different ideologies can unanimously agree. This is a win for preserving our Constitution and democracy, and we can’t waste a chance to celebrate this monumental victory.