President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is slated to defend regulations from the Food and Drug Administration that allow abortion pills to be sold online and shipped to patients in the mail.

Court records filed Monday as part of the ongoing litigation involving the abortion drug mifepristone show the Justice Department arguing that GOP-run states in the lawsuit lack standing to sue the agency.

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The administration, however, takes no position on the merits of the drug’s approval, or on additional changes under the Obama and Biden administrations that made it more accessible.

The Justice Department argues in its brief that the challenge from Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri to the rules for the abortion pills “have no connection to the Northern District of Texas,” where the lawsuit is currently pending.

“Regardless of the merits of the States’ claims, the States cannot proceed in this Court. The States’ Amended Complaint should be dismissed,” lawyers for the Justice Department added.

Insiders involved in the litigation have previously told the Washington Examiner that the three states filed their lawsuit in Texas because they were parties to the original lawsuit against the FDA, along with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an anti-abortion doctors group. 

That case rose to the high court last year, where a unanimous court found individual doctors and medical groups lacked standing to challenge the FDA’s approval and expansion of access to the drug, without ruling on whether the FDA acted properly in expanding access to the drug.

The case’s dismissal prompted the three states to continue with their litigation efforts against the FDA, hoping that a challenge from states would bring about adequate standing to challenge the agency.

Federal attorneys on Monday said in their brief that the states can redress their claims “in a District where venue is proper” but did note that some of the states’ wish-list regulations were outside of the statute of limitations. 

Anti-abortion advocates have made access to the abortion pill mifepristone their chief legal issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. 

The Washington Examiner contacted the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the key firms defending the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, for comment, in addition to the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List.

Mifepristone, which is used in nearly two-thirds of the 1 million abortions in the United States each year, was initially approved by the FDA in 2000 under the condition that a patient needed to be screened by a physician before being given the medication. The drug was also only initially approved for medications up to seven weeks’ gestation. 

In 2016, the FDA allowed for the abortifacient to be used to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks’ gestation. The agency at that time also removed reporting requirements for adverse reactions, other than death. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration removed in-person screening requirements for the medication, opening the door for healthcare providers in states that allow abortion to prescribe and mail mifepristone to patients in states that have restricted or prohibited elective abortions.

The three GOP-led states in the lawsuit argue that they have an interest in protecting their citizens from potential health complications from mifepristone.

A report from the Ethics and Public Policy Center published last week found that the real-world complication rate from the pills is roughly 22 times higher than the FDA estimates, finding that nearly 11% of women experience potentially life-threatening complications within 45 days of a medication abortion. 

The researchers found that, between 2017 and 2023, there were nearly 95,000 abortion-related insurance claims following medication abortions for roughly 865,0000 patients. They found more than 11,000 reports of severe infections and almost 29,000 cases of hemorrhaging.