ICYMI: New Accountable.US Report Reveals Trump Judicial Nominees are at the Center of Reviving the Crusade to Ban Medication Abortion

WASHINGTON, DC – In case you missed it, an Accountable.US report released yesterday, and first reported by Huff Post, revealed that two of President Donald Trump’s initial judicial nominees, Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan, are at the forefront of the push to revive a court case banning medication abortion. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against an extreme far-right effort to strip the FDA of its science-based, decades-long approval of mifepristone.

Now, Trump nominees Divine and Lanahan are pushing to resurrect the case with an amended complaint, which absurdly argues states are being harmed by fewer teen pregnancies because loss of potential population caused “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds.” The lawsuit also peddles false claims that mifepristone is unsafe for patients, despite over 100 scientific studies confirming the safety of the pills. Divine and Lanahan’s efforts have also been called out as a “nakedly political and judge-shopping ploy” as the case was refiled out of state in Amarillo, Texas, to ensure it’s heard by a favorable judge.

Two of President Donald Trump’s nominees for lifetime federal judgeships co-authored a major challenge to the abortion pill on behalf of Missouri.

Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan represented the state in challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s regulations around mifepristone. The nearly 200-page complaint filed in October includes outlandish statements rife with anti-abortion misinformation, including that the abortion pill “starves the baby to death in the womb” and the population loss caused by mifepristone access creates “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds” for some red states.

Divine is currently the solicitor general of Missouri and director of special litigation in the state attorney general’s office. Lanahan is the state’s principal deputy solicitor general.

Trump nominated Divine and Lanahan earlier this month. Divine is Trump’s pick for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri. He nominated Lanahan to a federal judgeship in the Eastern District of Missouri. The White House did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.

“Donald Trump is picking up right where he left off using the courts to impose an agenda that takes away our rights and control of our lives,” Caroline Ciccone, Accountable.US president, told HuffPost. Ciccone said Divine and Lanahan have a “record of eliminating Americans’ freedoms” which “is out of step with the vast majority of the public and calls into question their ability to rule impartially.”

“Senators should know that a vote for these judicial nominees is a rubber stamp for Trump’s out-of-touch ideological judicial agenda,” she added.

Divine and Lanahan authored the brief in State of Missouri v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration alongside several other lawyers representing the attorney general offices of Kansas and Idaho. The suit is an amended complaint to FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which anti-abortion advocates took all the way to the Supreme Court last summer. State attorneys general in Missouri, Idaho and Kansas essentially revived the suit, despite the Supreme Court rejecting the previous plaintiffs on a lack of legal standing.

Neither Divine or Lanahan have withdrawn from the State of Missouri v. FDA case. It’s unclear whether they will need to do so before judicial nomination hearings begin.

The amended complaint cited discredited anti-abortion junk science and made many of the same claims as Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Divine and Lanahan argue that mifepristone is dangerous and more regulations around the drug are needed, including that telehealth medicine for abortion care should be banned.

The suit makes other bizarre claims, including that abortion pills by mail should be banned because one study they cited shows that access to mifepristone via telehealth has lowered the birth rates for teen mothers.

Another outlandish claim in the complaint is that medication abortion is so terrifying that the sight of blood in a toilet will give women post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Women who choose chemical abortion are more likely to continue associating their homes, or the bathroom, with abortion. The home may become a trigger for uncomfortable emotions rather than a refuge,” the suit claims.

The amended complaint is a plain attempt at “judge shopping,” a strategy used by conservatives to get their cases before judges who agree with them. Missouri, Idaho and Kansas filed this amended complaint in the Northern District of Texas which has become the epicenter of this controversial practice. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a far-right Trump appointee infamous for his anti-abortion views, is the lone judge in the district who last year ruled that the FDA unlawfully approved mifepristone when it first went to market over two decades ago.

The Trump administration this month asked Kacsmaryk to toss the lawsuit because Missouri, Idaho and Kansas have no standing to sue. While Trump’s Department of Justice likely took this stance to kick the can down the road, not to protect abortion access, the argument still reveals the blatant attempt at judge shopping.

“This whole slate of judicial nominees is really bad, especially on abortion and reproductive rights,” Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at National Women’s Law Center, told HuffPost. “We’re obviously very concerned that this administration is coming out of the gates on judicial nominees aimed at further deterioration of abortion access. We’re very concerned about what this says for the next three and a half years.”

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