The Trump administration is facing a federal lawsuit from a red state over a Biden-era policy that opened the doors for the interstate shipment of abortion medication.

In a federal lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration, Louisiana is seeking to force the agency to reinstate a policy that requires abortion medication to be dispensed in person.

Louisiana has embarked on a campaign to clamp down on states that allow the shipment of abortion pills to other states that have legally banned the procedure. 

In 2023, the FDA finalized a rule change and lifted the requirement that women had to pick up the abortion medication in person, opening the door for the widespread shipment of the medication within and across state lines. 

Louisiana’s lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration changed the policy for “avowedly political reasons.” The complaint states that without that policy change, “activists in New York and California could not blanket pro-life states like Louisiana with Mifepristone by mail.”

The president of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, celebrated the lawsuit in a statement, saying, “I applaud my home state of Louisiana for filing this lawsuit to reinstate commonsense safety requirements that the Biden administration so callously and dangerously removed.”

“The Trump administration should repeal approval of Mifepristone altogether, but it should also swiftly adopt a policy that aligns with its declaration that abortion belongs under state jurisdiction,” Mr. Perkins said. 

The FDA did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

Louisiana bans abortion in most cases. But state officials have struggled to stop the shipment of abortion medication to its residents from other states. 

In January, a grand jury indicted a doctor in New York, Margaret Carpenter, for allegedly mailing abortion medication to a minor in Louisiana. The state’s governor, Jeff Landry, also signed an extradition order for Dr. Carpenter. New York officials, however, have refused to honor the extradition request, citing a state shield law designed to protect doctors.

Texas is trying to force New York to enforce a civil judgment against the same doctor for allegedly mailing abortion medication to the Lone Star State as well as Louisiana. 

Meanwhile, there have been several federal lawsuits filed against doctors and organizations that ship abortion pills on the grounds that the shipments violate the anti-obscenity Comstock Act of 1873.

In 2022, President Biden’s Department of Justice issued a determination that said the Comstock Act “does not prohibit the mailing of certain drugs that can be used to perform abortions where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully.” It argued that because there are “manifold ways” that recipients in every state may lawfully use such drugs, including to produce an abortion, the mailing of such drugs to a particular jurisdiction “is an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”

Opponents of abortion hope the litigation will wind up before the Supreme Court and that the justices will decide that the Comstock Act prohibits the transportation of abortion inducing medication.