'Drug-dealing' network shielded by blue states targeted in SCOTUS challenge

Three Republican state attorneys general are taking their campaign against mailed abortion pills to the nation's highest court. Louisiana's Liz Murrill, Alabama's Steve Marshall and Arkansas's Tim Griffin filed suit there on Wednesday against New York, California and Massachusetts. Their complaint is that those states' shield laws keep officials from assisting inquiries into providers accused of sending medication across state lines into places where abortion is banned, according to Fox News.

The same day, the three also brought a second case in Louisiana. It names more than 30 individuals and groups accused of advertising, prescribing, dispensing or shipping the pills into the plaintiff states. Murrill told Fox News Digital, "This is drug dealing and it's illegal," and said her state would keep doing all it can to enforce its laws.

Murrill described the shield laws as very comprehensive. She said California and New York bar their officials from helping other states carry out judgments tied to abortion-related conduct, and that such protections have undermined Louisiana's earlier attempts to prosecute doctors located elsewhere. Louisiana has charged two of them: Margaret Carpenter of New York and Remy Coeytaux of California, both accused of prescribing abortion drugs that ended up in Louisiana. Democratic governors Kathy Hochul of New York and Gavin Newsom of California have declined to hand the physicians over.

The filings are the newest step in a growing state-level struggle over abortion. That struggle has intensified since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →