Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas are asking the Supreme Court to strike down New York, California and Massachusetts laws that shield abortion-pill providers from out-of-state prosecution.
Three Republican attorneys general are taking the fight over mailed abortion pills straight to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to strike down the laws in New York, California and Massachusetts that shield providers from prosecution in states where the drugs are banned.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, joined by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, filed the challenge Wednesday. A separate lawsuit filed the same day in Louisiana names more than 30 people and organizations accused of advertising, prescribing, dispensing or shipping abortion pills into states that prohibit their distribution.
"This is drug dealing and it's illegal," Murrill said. "And we're going to continue to do everything that we can to enforce the laws in our states."
The twin filings mark the sharpest escalation yet in the state-by-state war over abortion that followed the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which struck down Roe v. Wade and returned the question to elected officials.
The Supreme Court complaint targets the so-called shield laws that California and New York have used to block cooperation with out-of-state investigations into abortion-pill providers. Murrill said the statutes bar state officials from assisting other states that seek to enforce judgments arising from abortion-related conduct.
"These shield laws are very comprehensive," she said. The filings argue that California and New York officials have refused to help, and that New York went further by strengthening its protections so that prescribers of abortion drugs can keep their names off prescription labels.
The complaint points to Louisiana's failed effort to extradite New York physician Margaret Carpenter, a case in which Gov. Kathy Hochul declared there was "no way in hell" she would comply with the state's request. Louisiana has also indicted California physician Remy Coeytaux, and Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the state's extradition request in January, saying California would not help another state punish doctors for providing care that is legal there.
Murrill made clear the legal offensive is aimed at the state protections themselves. "I think that if I sent guns into their states illegally, they would certainly try to come after me," she said. "I said specifically at the time that we would be coming for them and we are."
The Louisiana lawsuit runs about 100 pages and describes what Murrill calls a "pill pipeline." Investigators say providers used online questionnaires to gather information from customers before mailing abortion drugs into states where distribution is prohibited.
Murrill said agents carried out controlled purchases and received pills packaged in small bags, sometimes in quantities she said exceeded what would ordinarily be prescribed. She argued the process leaves patients with no supervision, no examination and no follow-up care.
"We've seen it for ourselves," she said. "There's no supervision, there's no healthcare, there's no communication whatsoever. It's all done online."
She also pointed to cases Louisiana authorities said involved women being pressured or deceived into taking the medication. In one case she described, a father who did not want his teenage daughter to continue a pregnancy mixed the drugs into a smoothie and forced her to drink it. The girl ultimately gave birth at 23 weeks, and Murrill said the baby is still fighting for its life in a neonatal intensive care unit.
The legal offensive is one front in a conflict that has moved well beyond state courthouses. Louisiana has separately challenged federal rules that eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, the drug at the center of the pill-pipeline case. The president's pick to run the Food and Drug Administration faced pointed questions about that drug during her Senate confirmation hearing.
Murrill said Louisiana wants more help from the federal government. "Obviously we think the FDA could be doing more and we've asked them to do that," she said. The new filings put fresh pressure on federal health regulators and the Justice Department to tighten oversight of the drugs, a step pro-life leaders say is overdue.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser backed the litigation, accusing blue states of using their laws to obstruct justice and urging the Justice Department to move on Louisiana's separate challenge to the federal rules. "Abortion activists flagrantly sell dangerous drugs across state lines and women and children pay the price," she said.
The justices are not obligated to take the case. If they decline, the shield laws stay in place, and Louisiana's prosecutions of out-of-state physicians will keep running into the same wall of refusal. If the court agrees to hear it, the case would test how far one state's law can reach into another state's protections -- and how much one state must assist another's enforcement.
Louisiana's parallel lawsuit against the pill pipeline will proceed on its own track in state court, where Murrill said her office will use "every tool that we have at our disposal."
For now, the filings guarantee that the post-Dobbs conflict between red and blue states will keep escalating, with the Supreme Court once again positioned to draw the line. The question to watch is whether the justices add the shield-law case to their docket in the coming weeks, and whether federal health agencies tighten the rules around the drugs in the meantime.
Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas are asking the Supreme Court to strike down New York, California and Massachusetts laws that shield abortion-pill providers from out-of-state prosecution.
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