Politics
Trump Has Been Sued 198 Times for Withholding Funding. It Hasn’t Stopped Him.
Plaintiff Council for Opportunity in Education
Defendant U.S. Department of Education
Filed in the District of Columbia on Oct. 14, 2025
Injunction
Plaintiff Dallas County, Tex.
Defendant Kennedy
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 5, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Defendant Kennedy Jr.
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on July 21, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Colorado
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on April 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Housing Authority of the County of San Diego
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Oct. 15, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Alliance to End Homelessness
Defendant Department of Housing and Urban Development
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Dec. 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Washington
Defendant Federal Emergency Management Agency
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on July 16, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Arizona
Defendant Environmental Protection Agency
Filed in the Western District of Washington on Oct. 16, 2025
Plaintiff Open Technology Fund
Defendant Lake
Filed in the District of Columbia on March 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Public Radio
Defendant Trump
Filed in the District of Columbia on May 27, 2025
Plaintiff San Francisco Unified School District
Defendant AmeriCorps
Filed in the Northern District of California on March 10, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Filed in the District of Maine on June 17, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Latino Arts
Defendant National Endowment for the Arts
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on March 6, 2025
lost
President Trump has tried to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to coerce states, punish opponents, remake programs and impose his views. His targets have repeatedly sued to stop him, and the courts have repeatedly rebuked him — only for the president to try again and again.
Take just these seven cases, all of them tied to the administration’s efforts to block funds from “sanctuary” communities, those that restrict cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Last February, a coalition of cities and counties sued over executive orders directing agencies to shut off such funds.
Plaintiff City and County of San Francisco
Defendant Trump
Filed in the Northern District of California on Feb. 7, 2025
injunction
A judge issued a preliminary injunction, halting those directives while the case proceeded.
The same day, the Department of Transportation told communities they must cooperate with immigration enforcement to get federal transportation dollars.
Twenty states, led by California, soon sued …
Plaintiff California
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost in district court.
The Department of Homeland Security tried to withhold emergency management funds. Another lawsuit followed …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant FEMA
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost.
Then D.H.S. tried reducing counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states instead …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Noem
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Sept. 29, 2025
lost
… and again, the administration lost.
In the past year, funds for housing, transit, health and public safety have all been conditioned on cooperation with immigration.
Plaintiff King County
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Western District of Washington on May 2, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Fresno
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Aug. 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Chicago
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Nov. 12, 2025
injunction
Injunctions regularly followed.
These are among 198 lawsuits in the past year identified by The New York Times that challenge how Mr. Trump has leveraged federal funding to carry out his agenda without the consent of Congress. And they reflect one remarkable feature of the campaign: It has proceeded undeterred by losses in court.
With that persistence, the administration has been hammering away at a new kind of reality in Washington, one where the president wields far more control over spending, and where his opponents aren’t entitled to the services of their federal government.
“Anyone in the country who relies on federal dollars is depending on the president to get that money,” said Matthew Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University. “And that’s a new thing.”
The president has threatened money to states that don’t adopt his policies, universities that don’t bend to his will, hospitals that don’t alter their services, school districts that don’t abandon diversity efforts, nonprofits that don’t embrace his gender views, and researchers who study the wrong subjects.
These moves have tested whether Congress, granted the “power of the purse,” still holds the ultimate authority over spending. And they have challenged the courts with a flood of cases — 37 separate suits from the state of California; four from the Association of American Universities on virtually the same question; one from King County, Wash., that has grown to include as plaintiffs 75 communities and agencies.
“You would think there would be some conditioning here: You do an action, you get sued, you lose, maybe you don’t do that action anymore,” said Rob Bonta, who as California’s attorney general has brought many of those suits. “He’s continued to repeat offend. And repeat lose.”
The administration’s approach has amounted to “a game of three-card monte” in the courts, said Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Each injunction covers the parties suing and the specific programs at issue, but doesn’t necessarily stop the administration from blocking funds to other groups it disfavors. The result, Mr. Bagenstos said: “‘Oh, well, you think I can’t do this thing over there? Well I’m going to do it over here.’”
Presidents have long sought to steer funding to advance their priorities, designing programs with Congress or awarding competitive grants to communities that emphasize certain ideas. But the Trump administration has gone much further: terminating en masse funds that were already awarded; imposing new conditions on future grants that flout federal rule making; and blocking money to whole programs and agencies created by Congress.
The groups that have sued represent a fraction of everyone affected; many have lacked the means or the will to go to court. But these 198 cases, as of the beginning of March, have pried open a public view into the breadth of the administration’s tactics. And one year in, they have produced a lopsided record of rulings.
When plaintiffs have sought immediate relief, district court judges have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions 79 percent of the time, signaling plaintiffs’ likely success on the merits. In the 26 instances where district judges have issued partial or final rulings, the administration lost 23.
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York v. Department of Health and Human Services
Just because a pronouncement comes from the president does not make it true, even if expressed in the form of an executive order, and even then, does not supersede the law.
lost
American Federation of Teachers v. U.S. Department of Education
By leapfrogging important procedural requirements, the government has unwittingly run headfirst into serious constitutional problems.
lost
Michigan v. Noem
None of this appears consistent with Congressional intent or FEMA’s mission.
lost
The administration declined to comment on the record. But a White House official authorized to describe the strategy said the Trump administration is restoring power to the presidency that previous presidents have shied away from, while tapping that power to prevent fraud and steward taxpayer dollars. The groups bringing all these lawsuits, that person said, are the ones using the courts in a hostile campaign to hamstring the president.
The administration has notably walked away from some defeats without appealing them. But it is counting on a better record before appeals court judges, as has been the case more broadly. Among cases it has appealed, appellate courts have reversed or paused orders against the administration in about 40 percent of their rulings, often with judges appointed by Mr. Trump in his favor.
But even when it is losing in court, plaintiffs’ attorneys and legal scholars said, the administration may still find it is winning on its own terms.
‘Undeserving recipients’
Alongside that first sanctuary cities directive, early executive orders outlining the president’s core agenda aimed to end all “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the government, to eradicate “gender ideology,” to reverse the “green new deal,” and to enforce “election integrity.” All of them proposed leveraging federal funds to do it.
These cases show the administration pulling that lever in numerous ways.
It has tried to set conditions with no clear relationship to program goals (like immigration requirements for highway funds). It has threatened funding to force states to share information (voter rolls, food aid lists). It has told grantees they must pledge to comply with orders the president hasn’t issued yet. And it has invoked criminal and financial penalties if they break those pledges.
It has terminated even small sums, targeting with laser precision opponents of the president (who then sued):
The American Bar Association lost $3.2 million in domestic violence training grants after the administration attacked the group.
Plaintiff American Bar Association
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the District of Columbia on April 23, 2025
injunction
The American Academy of Pediatrics lost nearly $12 million in grants in apparent retaliation for its advocacy of vaccines and gender-affirming care.
Plaintiff American Academy of Pediatrics
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 24, 2025
injunction
Maine lost access to support for school meals as Gov. Janet Mills was fighting with the president over transgender athletes.
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant Department of Agriculture
Filed in the District of Maine on April 7, 2025
injunction
The government backed down with the American Bar Association and Maine after judges issued initial rulings, only to turn its focus elsewhere.
“You can see that the government’s posture is essentially: Do the thing that’s going to make the White House happy, or get the press release about sticking it to trans people,” said Kevin Love Hubbard, a former D.O.J. attorney who represented the government before leaving in August. Agencies are doing that, he said, “without thinking about then having to go into court.”
Today, he is suing the government in several funding cases with the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island.
Most of these nearly 200 cases are about disfavored categories of recipients like sanctuary jurisdictions, Harvard researchers or organizations serving transgender people.
“We are the undeserving recipients, at least in the mind of our current administration,” said Leesa Manion, the prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., which encompasses Seattle. “The goal all along was to ensure that we — the undesirables — do not get our fair share. Whether it works or doesn’t work, if that’s your overarching goal, you just keep evolving your technique.”
The administration is now increasingly targeting blue states as such a category, too.
That began during the government shutdown last October, when the White House budget director Russell Vought announced the administration would cancel nearly $8 billion in energy projects in 16 states — all where voters had supported Kamala Harris in 2024.
A small group of grantees, including the city of St. Paul, Minn., sued in response.
Plaintiff St. Paul, Minnesota
Defendant Wright
Filed in the District of Columbia on Nov. 10, 2025
lost
In January, the administration lost in district court, where a judge said it had violated the Constitution.
But officials were already preparing other cuts to blue states. H.H.S. froze $10 billion in child care and family assistance funds to five states. The states sued …
Plaintiff New York
Defendant Administration for Children and Families
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 8, 2026
injunction
… and a judge issued an injunction.
The D.O.T. suspended funding to the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project connecting New Jersey and New York. Both states sued …
Plaintiff New Jersey
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Feb. 3, 2026
injunction
… and secured another injunction.
Even after those setbacks, in early February the administration told Congress it would cut more than $600 million in public health grants to four blue states. They sued …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Vought
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Feb. 11, 2026
injunction
… and the next day, a judge issued another injunction in the form of a temporary restraining order.
Still, last week, the administration said it would withhold about $250 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota (prompting another lawsuit).
These moves, citing a mix of fraud and immigration policies, follow the president’s vow to block all funding to sanctuary jurisdictions — a group, under the D.O.J.’s definition, that could encompass one-third of the U.S. population.
“They can sue us and maybe they’ll win,” the president said in January. “But we’re not giving money to sanctuary cities anymore.”
Arbitrary and capricious
At stake in many cases are weighty constitutional principles: the separation of powers; the right to due process when the government says grantees have done something wrong; the First Amendment protections for organizations to advocate their views without government retaliation.
In the St. Paul suit, a district judge, Amit P. Mehta, ruled in January for the first time in one of these cases that the administration had violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by singling out states for their partisan lean. During the litigation, the government didn’t deny doing that. Rather, it argued it was allowed to.
St. Paul, Minnesota v. Wright
Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024. There is no rational relationship between that classification and defendants’ stated governmental interest.
lost
But that ruling covered only seven canceled grants worth about $27.5 million out of the nearly $8 billion total terminated. Now a coalition of 13 states is suing with the same constitutional argument in a new case about the same cuts.
The constant that is running through most of these cases, however, is the more mundane-sounding Administrative Procedure Act. That 1946 law says that the federal government must be reasoned and document its thinking according to transparent rules — in short, that it shouldn’t be slapdash and secretive.
These cases are full of examples of it doing just that. When the Department of Homeland Security tried last year to reduce counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states, the agency appeared to arrive at the lower award sums by simply lopping digits off the original values.
Illinois v. Noem
Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result.
lost
Officials have sent out directives with copy-and-pasted typos, termination letters without agency letterhead and bare explanations with boilerplate rationale.
“You had literally grants for millions of dollars being canceled in a single vague paragraph: ‘This no longer comports with administration priorities, thank you very much,’” said Claudia Polsky, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who has led a class-action lawsuit among University of California researchers that has restored, for now, at least a thousand grants worth about a billion dollars.
The administration has given grantees new mandates — and prohibitions — so vague that they haven’t known how to comply.
“‘Promote gender ideology’ — what does that mean?” said Maria Corona, the head of the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which has challenged new conditions on grants. “When you’re talking about ‘violence against women,’ in the language itself we’re already talking about a gender issue.”
Last February, the National Institutes of Health issued a seismic policy change on a Friday night, to take effect the following Monday, slashing payments to universities for research overhead, drawing several lawsuits.
Plaintiff Massachusetts
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Medical Colleges
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
In April, the administration lost these cases, consolidated under one judge (an appeals court upheld the decision this year).
But after the district court ruling, the Department of Energy, followed by the National Science Foundation and then the Department of Defense, each rolled out an identical policy.
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Energy
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on April 14, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant National Science Foundation
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on May 5, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Defense
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on June 16, 2025
lost
As these cases accumulated, so did the judges’ irritation.
Association of American Universities v. Department of Defense
The Court does not write upon a blank slate but instead follows three other courts in this district who have come to similar conclusions with respect to different federal agencies’ attempts to enact virtually identical policies. Notably, defendants ignored these obviously relevant — and at least reasonable — analyses before adopting this policy.
lost
Success for the administration has seldom involved winning on the merits. Rather, the administration has argued in most of these cases that district judges have no business hearing them at all. Cases seeking money, it says, belong instead in the Court of Federal Claims, a specialized court dedicated to financial contract disputes with the government.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett breathed life into that argument, concurring in a preliminary ruling last summer that surprised some legal experts. Her opinion — suggesting policies should be litigated in district court, while payouts resulting from them belong in the Court of Federal Claims — has further complicated these cases. So has the Supreme Court’s ruling last year ending nationwide injunctions.
Winning while losing
By the time grantees have gone to court, they have already lost much. Researchers have halted studies. Nonprofits have laid off staff. The core expectation that the government is a reliable partner has already been undercut.
“The result is a corrosive uncertainty that undermines the basic functioning of government,” said Jacob Leibenluft, a former official in the Biden White House budget office.
That uncertainty sets in the moment money isn’t on time, or when grantees start to think it won’t be in the future. Other changes take root, too: Grantees rethink what’s in their mission statements; professors shift what they teach.
American Association of University Professors v. Trump
Numerous U.C. faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the U.C. system.
injunction
The administration is advancing these changes even when it’s losing particular funding cases in court. And it has successfully blocked money to groups who haven’t sued, further entrenching the president’s expanded power over spending.
Whether this dynamic sticks depends as much on Congress as on the courts. If legislators were more actively guarding programs they had funded themselves, many of these lawsuits likely wouldn’t exist.
New York v. Trump
The interaction of the three co-equal branches of government is an intricate, delicate and sophisticated balance — but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance. Here, the Executive put itself above Congress.
injunction
In rare cases, Republicans in Congress have pushed back against the administration and been able to reverse billions in cuts far more quickly than courts could, including from after-school programs and mental health and addiction treatment.
For most programs targeted by the administration, however, Republicans have publicly said little, and that’s unlikely to change as the president now targets blue states more explicitly. Republican and Democratic appropriators have together quietly tucked some new guardrails into spending bills this year. But it is Democrats, primarily, who have spoken up for the larger principle that lawmakers set the terms of federal spending — not the president.
“We have to guard that with our lives,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator in the House. The alternative, she said, is that funding becomes a tool to silence dissent. “‘Don’t speak out — or I’ll cancel your grant.’”
Absent bipartisan clamor in Congress, cases like King County v. Turner grind on. The case was brought last May by eight local governments challenging new conditions on housing and transportation grants. Then they added H.H.S. as a defendant. And 23 more local governments and transit and housing agencies joined as plaintiffs. Then another 29 came on board. Then 15 more. Each one has had to explain the harms it has faced. The judge has had to review each claim, alongside the details of dozens of grant programs, while crafting what are now four successive injunctions. All that is just one lawsuit.
“Should we have to do that 200 times, 300 times?” said Erin Overbey, the general counsel with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “What’s the number where we reach critical mass?”
Politics
Video: The G.O.P. Rush To Break Up Majority-Black Districts
new video loaded: The G.O.P. Rush To Break Up Majority-Black Districts
By Nick Corasaniti, Laura Bult, June Kim, Edward Vega and Leanne Abraham
May 9, 2026
Politics
Harris accuses Trump allies of trying to ‘rig’ 2026 midterms after Virginia court tosses redistricting measure
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Former Vice President Kamala Harris accused President Donald Trump and Republicans of trying to “rig the 2026 elections” after the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated a voter-approved redistricting referendum, a ruling she said would “give a boost” to that effort.
“Today, the Virginia Supreme Court ignored the will of the people and overturned those democratically chosen maps,” Harris wrote on X on May 8.
“This ruling gives a boost to Donald Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 elections and the Republicans’ long game to attack voting rights,” she added.
The ruling marked a significant victory for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms and escalated an already intensifying national battle over redistricting and control of Congress.
VIRGINIA SUPREME COURT RULES ON NEW CONGRESSIONAL MAP
Former Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a fireside chat at MEET Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on May 7, 2026. (Ian Maule/Getty Images)
“We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia,” the state’s high court said in its decision. “This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy.”
The measure, which passed by a narrow 51% to 49% margin, would have temporarily shifted redistricting authority from Virginia’s nonpartisan commission to the Democrat-controlled legislature through 2030 and was expected to yield a 10-1 Democratic advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.
Trump praised the decision in a post on Truth Social, calling it a “Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia.”
‘JUSTICE’: CELEBRATION, MOCKERY ERUPT AFTER SPANBERGER ‘GERRYMANDER’ IS BLOWN UP IN BLOCKBUSTER DECISION
Former Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a fireside chat at MEET Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on May 7, 2026. (Ian Maule/Getty Images)
“The Virginia Supreme Court has just struck down the Democrats’ horrible gerrymander,” he wrote.
Democrats sharply criticized the ruling. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said “a group of unelected judges on the Virginia Supreme Court chose to put partisan politics over the will of the people.”
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones also pushed back, saying the decision “silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots” and that his office is evaluating “every legal pathway forward.”
ERIC HOLDER ACCUSES GOP OF ‘STEALING SEATS’ WHILE DEFENDING ‘FAIR’ DEMOCRATIC REDISTRICTING PUSH
A person votes in the Virginia redistricting referendum at Fairfax Government Center in Fairfax, Va., on April 21, 2026. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
Harris echoed that sentiment in her post, writing, “We are rightfully outraged, but we will not give up. We must continue our fight to restore the power of the people.”
Her comments come as she has stepped up attacks on Trump in recent appearances while facing renewed questions about her political future.
At a recent event in Las Vegas, Harris said, “For far too many people in our country, the American dream, is not real. And in fact, for many people in their lived experience, it’s what they would consider an American myth.”
KAMALA HARRIS’ TRAVELS AND COMMENTS CLEARLY POINT TO 2028
The approved referendum could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge, if the court’s do not ultimately strike it down. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
She also declined to downplay Trump, saying, “I’m not going to dismiss him as being an idiot. He’s dangerous.”
At the same time, top Democrats have been reluctant to weigh in on whether Harris should lead the party in 2028.
“I have no idea,” Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., told Fox News Digital when asked about her future.
“I have no idea who’s running, and we’ll focus on 2028 after 2026,” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., said.
Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., said the decision ultimately rests with Harris but added he believes Democrats should have “a wide-open Democratic primary.”
The Virginia ruling is the latest flashpoint in a broader redistricting fight as both parties position themselves ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Harris, for her part, signaled she intends to remain engaged.
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“I firmly and strongly believe that when you feel powerless, you are powerless,” Harris said. “And when you feel powerful, you are powerful. And we are powerful and we are powerful. And so let’s just show ourselves, each other, our power around the midterms and every day.”
Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch, Leo Briceno, Olivia Palombo, and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this reporting.
Politics
California abortion pill suppliers ready with workaround in case of Supreme Court ban
The last time the Supreme Court threatened to end access to the country’s most popular abortion method, California’s network of online providers and their pharmaceutical suppliers scrambled to respond.
Now, with the fate of the cocktail used in roughly two-thirds of U.S. terminations once again in the balance, they’re not even breaking a sweat.
Dr. Michele Gomez, co-founder of the MYA Network, a consortium of virtual reproductive healthcare providers, said the supply chain is “ready to switch in a day” to an alternative drug combination.
“It’s not going away and it’s not going to slow down,” Gomez said.
On May 1, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to block the drug mifepristone from being prescribed virtually and shipped through the mail, making such deliveries illegal across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed that decision, allowing prescriptions to resume until the court issues an emergency ruling next week.
Mifepristone is the first half of a two-drug protocol for medication abortion, which made up 63% of all legal abortions in the U.S. in 2023.
Between a quarter and a third of those abortion drugs are now prescribed by healthcare providers over the internet and delivered by mail — a path Louisiana and other ban states are fighting to bar.
“Abortion access has gone up with all the telehealth providers,” Gomez said. “We uncovered an unmet need.”
But the cocktail’s second ingredient, misoprostol, can be used to produce abortion on its own — a method that’s often more painful and slightly less effective.
It would be easy for suppliers to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol — and much harder for courts to block it, experts said.
“We heard about this on Friday and organizations that mail pills were mailing misoprostol on Saturday,” Gomez said. “They already knew what to do.”
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, California became one of the first states to enshrine abortion rights for residents in its Constitution and legislate protection for clinicians who prescribe abortion pills to women in states with bans.
Last fall, legislators in Sacramento expanded those protections by allowing pills to be mailed without either the doctor or the patient’s name attached.
But cases like the one being decided next week could still sharply limit abortion rights even in states with extensive legal protections, experts warned.
“Even though California has built a fortress around its own constitutional protections of reproductive freedom, those [protections] become vulnerable to the whims of antiabortion states if the Supreme Court gives those states their imprimatur,” said Michele Goodwin, professor at Georgetown Law and an expert on reproductive justice.
Coral Alonso sings in Spanish as protesters rally on the three-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade on June 24, 2025, in Los Angeles. The ruling ended the federal right to legal abortion in the United States.
(David McNew / Getty Images)
Legal experts are split over how the justices will decide the medication’s mail-order fate.
“This is a case where law clearly won’t matter,” said Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the Supreme Court.
“In a very important midterm election year, I think there’s at least two Republicans on the court who will decide that upholding the 5th Circuit would really hurt the Republicans at the polls,” he said. “If women can’t get this by mail in California or other blue states where abortion is legal, it’s going to have devastating consequences, and I think the court knows that.”
But he and others believe it’s no longer a matter of if — but when and how — the drugs are restricted, including in California.
“This is curating a backdrop for a legal showdown that may surely come,” Goodwin said.
The court’s most conservative justices could find grounds to act in the long-forgotten Comstock Act of 1873. The brainchild of America’s zealously anti-porn postmaster Anthony Comstock, the law not only banned the mailing of the “Birth of Venus” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but also condoms, diaphragms and any drug, tool or text that could be used to produce an abortion.
Though it hasn’t been enforced since the 1970s, the antiabortion provision of the law remains on the books, experts said.
“The next move is with the Comstock Act, which Justices Alito and Thomas have already been hinting at,” Goodwin said. “In that case, it’s like playing Monopoly — we could skip mifepristone and go straight to contraception. The goal is to make sure none of that gets to be in the mail.”
That move would upend how Americans get both abortions and birth control, and put an unassuming L.A. County pharmacy squarely in the government’s crosshairs.
Although doctors in nearly two dozen states can safely prescribe medication abortion to women anywhere in the U.S., only a handful of specialty pharmacies actually fill those mail orders, Gomez explained. Among the largest is Honeybee in Culver City, which did not reply to requests for comment.
Even if the justices don’t reach for Comstock, a decision in Louisiana’s favor next week could create a two-tiered system of abortion across California and other blue states, experts said.
“The people this case hurts the most are the poor and the rural,” said Segall, the Supreme Court expert.
National data show that abortion patients are disproportionately poor. Most are also already mothers. Losing mail access to mifepristone would leave many with the more painful, less effective option while those with the time and means to reach a clinic continue to get the gold standard of care.
“There are fundamental questions of citizenship at the heart of this,” said Goodwin, the constitutional scholar. “Under the 14th Amendment, women are supposed to have equality, citizenship, liberty. It’s as though the Supreme Court has taken a black marker and pressed it against all of those words.”
For Gomez and other providers, that’s tomorrow’s problem.
“The lawyers and the politicians are just going to do their thing,” the doctor said. “The healthcare providers are just trying to get medications to people who need them.”
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