The Supreme Court could be roped back into an abortion dispute due to conflicting rulings in lower courts over the drug mifepristone, nearly a year after a leak paved the way for overturning Roe v. Wade.

Here's how the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization can inform what the Supreme Court might do in this case:

DOJ ASKS APPEALS COURT TO STAY TEXAS RULING AGAINST FDA ABORTION DRUG APPROVAL

Through the 6-3 ruling in Dobbs, the justices gave states back the right to form restrictive or permissive abortion laws while taking a neutral stance on the constitutionality of abortion.

District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's Friday ruling went above and beyond that scope, placing a preliminary injunction on the Food and Drug Administration's long-standing approval of mifepristone after the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and other anti-abortion plaintiffs in the case argued they would sustain theoretical harms.

Kacsmaryk's ruling out of the Northern District of Texas triggered a separate ruling in a Washington-based district court holding the drug must remain available in 17 states plus the District of Columbia.

"It's just so speculative," Jessie Hill, a constitutional law professor at Case Western Reserve University specializing in reproductive health rights, told the Washington Examiner about anti-abortion plaintiffs' arguments. "It's a pretty weak case for standing," Hill said, expressing skepticism that the plaintiffs can ultimately show they have suffered a concrete or particularized injury, which is required to sue in federal court.

Did Kavanaugh imply Dobbs was the last abortion question for the high court?

A significant part of the Dobbs decision was Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence that suggested the justices may wipe their hands of determining abortion matters in the future.

“After today’s decision, the nine Members of this Court will no longer decide the basic legality of pre-viability abortion for all 330 million Americans,” Kavanaugh wrote. “That issue will be resolved by the people and their representatives in the democratic process in the States or Congress.”

But a further look at his writing clearly states, "Other abortion-related questions may emerge in the future," specifying the justices would not be tasked with picking and choosing the point of viability for unborn human life.

If the court does take up an appeal stemming from Kacsmaryk's decision, it would likely not deal with the "basic legality" of medication abortion. Rather, it would look at the question as an administrative law issue.

Abortion case or administrative law case?

At its heart, the issue over the abortion pill injunction is "really more an administrative law question than an abortion question," Hill said, noting the Supreme Court could decide this case "without ever citing or referencing Dobbs."

Hill contended that if the pill injunction does relate at all to Dobbs, it's due in part to the high court's finding that abortion is a state issue and that the "state should be allowed to set their own abortion policy."

"And this lawsuit is all about trying to change that at the federal level for the whole country," Hill said, because it is estimated that over half of all abortions in the country are accomplished with drugs such as mifepristone.

In the Biden administration's bid to freeze the ruling at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the Justice Department laid out three pillar arguments against the preliminary injunction.

The plaintiffs "lack standing to challenge FDA’s approval of a drug they neither take nor prescribe; their challenge to FDA actions dating back to 2000 is manifestly untimely; and they have provided no basis for second-guessing FDA’s scientific judgment," the DOJ wrote.

Hill said that if the Supreme Court is going to apply its same jurisprudence to this matter as it would any other case, "whether it's standing, whether it's statute of limitations, whether it's various administrative law doctrines ... it has to find there's no merit in this case."

What are the chances this case is appealed to the Supreme Court?

"I think there's a good chance that the Supreme Court will weigh in some substantive way," Hill said, noting it depends on the outcome of an appeal to one of the most conservative courts in the nation.

When the DOJ asked the 5th Circuit to freeze Kacsmaryk's ruling earlier this week, it requested a response by no later than Thursday at noon, just hours before the injunction against the drug is slated to take effect Friday.

However, the Supreme Court may not need to consider the matter if the plaintiffs lose in the appeals court.

"Certainly, if the plaintiffs win at the 5th Circuit, the federal government is going to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in," Hill said, adding that if the anti-abortion groups fail to convince the appeals court to leave the injunction in place, it could spell bad news for their efforts because the "5th Circuit is pretty conservative."

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Meanwhile, counsel for the anti-abortion groups at the Alliance Defending Freedom have called on the appeals court to "keep the district court’s ruling in place."

“Federal agencies that act lawlessly must be held accountable," ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist told the Washington Examiner. "The FDA illegally approved dangerous chemical abortion drugs and has evaded its legal responsibility to answer the American people’s questions for two decades."