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# High Court Adds 2 Days to Mifepristone Stay
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/high-court-adds-2-days-to-mifepristone-stay/
- Published: 2023-04-19T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T18:26:25.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5154258

The U.S. Supreme Court 4/19 extended by two days its administrative stay of a lower court’s 4/7 order ([see earlier story](https://www.fdaweb.com/mifeprex-judge-damns-fda-for-worse-abortion-outcomes/)) that would restrict the distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone. The additional stay until 11:59 PM 4/21 gives the high court additional time to review a 4/14-filed appeal by the Department of Justice that is seeking a longer stay of Texas federal judge **Matthew Kacsmaryk’**s nationwide ban on mifepristone while it is appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Oral arguments are on fast track in that venue and could begin in about a month.

The [DoJ appeal](https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22A902/263491/20230414103258942%5FAlliance%20for%20Hippocratic%20Med%20%20application.pdf?ref=fdaweb.com) “concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” the government said in its earlier appeal. Approved in 2000, FDA has maintained its scientific judgment “across five presidential administrations, and it has modified the original conditions of mifepristone’s approval as decades of experience have conclusively demonstrated the drug’s safety,” the government contended.

The appeal said that Kacsmaryk’s order would nullify FDA’s approval and effectively prohibit mifepristone from being introduced into interstate commerce, “upending the status quo based on the court’s deeply misguided assessment of mifepristone’s safety… The Fifth Circuit stayed the district court’s suspension of FDA’s original approval of mifepristone. But it refused to stay the suspension of subsequent updates to the conditions on the drug’s use, which have governed the drug’s distribution for seven years and provided a safe and effective option for women who would otherwise have to undergo a surgical abortion.”