The United States Supreme Court has issued a short extension of last week’s temporary stay allowing for women to continue accessing mifepristone, a drug used in medication-induced abortions, by mail.
Originally set to expire at 5pm on Monday, May 11, 2026, Justice Samuel Alito signed a brief order pushing the expiration date ahead to Thursday, May 14.
This comes after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed only in person in response to a case brought by the State of Louisiana.
This issue was brought to the Supreme Court by two drug companies that produce mifepristone, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, calling the 5th Circuit’s order “unprecedented.”
Danco said that the lower court’s decision “inject[ed] immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions,” while GenBioPro argued that the ruling “ha[d] unleashed regulatory chaos.”
[RELATED: SCOTUS Allows Continued Mail Distribution of Abortion Drug After Pause by 5th Circuit]
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2024 to allow the FDA’s more relaxed regulation of mifepristone to stand, marking the first time that the Court had considered an abortion-related case since overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
In the unanimous opinion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court explained that its decision to allow the FDA to authorize mail-delivery of mifepristone rested on the fact that the plaintiffs who brought the case “lack[ed] Article III standing to challenge FDA’s actions regarding the regulation of mifepristone.”
Consequently, the Justices reversed the Fifth Circuit ruling in favor of the plaintiffs and remanded the decision for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.
According to the FDA’s website, mifepristone “blocks a hormone called progesterone that is needed for a pregnancy to continue.”
“Mifepristone, when used together with another medicine called misoprostol, is used to end a pregnancy through ten weeks gestation,” the FDA explains.
Mifepristone was first approved by the FDA in 2000 for use in medication abortions up to seven weeks into a pregnancy. This time frame was extended to ten weeks in 2016.
In 2025, Louisiana filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.
The state argued in its filing that they had standing to bring a case because they had “incontrovertible evidence that … doctors and others are (as the Biden administration intended) sending streams of mifepristone by mail into Louisiana for the express purpose of causing thousands of abortions in Louisiana every year.”
Under Louisiana law, nearly all abortions are illegal, except when necessary to save the life of the mother.
Joining the state’s lawsuit was Rosalie Markezich, an individual plaintiff who said she was coerced into taking abortion drugs “that her boyfriend obtained via the U.S. Postal Service from a doctor in California.”
Had the in-person dispensing requirement been in effect, she argued, she “would have received the protection of a private in-person medical appointment,” during which she would “have been able to tell a doctor that she did not want an abortion.”
A federal judge put the case on hold pending the FDA’s review of mifepristone’s safety, but Louisiana brought its claims to the 5th Circuit, seeking to have the in-person mandate reinstated while litigation continues.
In its emergency application to the Supreme Court, the drug companies argued that “Louisiana is not required to ‘prescribe or use mifepristone’ or to ‘do anything or to refrain from doing anything’ as a result of FDA’s actions.”
Since the stay was first issued last week, many amicus, or friend of the court, briefs have been filed, including from lawmakers and both pro-abortion and pro-life advocacy organizations.
A coalition of 2,794 women injured by abortion also joined together to file an amicus brief, as well as 23 Republican attorneys general.
