Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf
Page Number: 17.0

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

B 
Here,  the  plaintiff  doctors  and  medical  associations  are
unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA’s regulation 
of others.  Specifically, FDA’s regulations apply to doctors
prescribing  mifepristone  and  to  pregnant  women  taking
mifepristone.  But  the  plaintiff  doctors  and  medical 
associations do not prescribe or use mifepristone.  And FDA 
has not required the plaintiffs to do anything or to refrain
from doing anything.

The plaintiffs do not allege the kinds of injuries described 
above  that  unregulated  parties  sometimes  can  assert  to 
demonstrate  causation.  Because  the  plaintiffs  do  not
prescribe,  manufacture,  sell,  or  advertise  mifepristone  or
sponsor  a  competing  drug,  the  plaintiffs  suffer  no  direct 
monetary injuries from FDA’s actions relaxing regulation of 
mifepristone.  Nor do they suffer injuries to their property, 
or  to  the  value  of  their  property,  from  FDA’s  actions. 
Because  the  plaintiffs  do  not  use  mifepristone,  they 
obviously can suffer no physical injuries from FDA’s actions 
relaxing regulation of mifepristone. 

Rather,  the  plaintiffs  say  that  they  are  pro-life,  oppose 
elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, 
and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and 
used by others.  The plaintiffs appear to recognize that those 
general legal, moral, ideological, and policy concerns do not 
suffice on their own to confer Article III standing to sue in 
federal court.  So to try to establish standing, the plaintiffs
advance several complicated causation theories to connect 
FDA’s actions to the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries in fact. 

The  first  set  of  causation  theories  contends  that  FDA’s 
relaxed regulation of mifepristone may cause downstream
conscience  injuries  to  the  individual  doctor  plaintiffs  and 
the specified members of the plaintiff medical associations, 
who are also doctors.  (We will refer to them collectively as 
“the doctors.”)  The second set of causation theories asserts 
that  FDA’s  relaxed  regulation  of  mifepristone  may  cause