Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

18 

FDA v. ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE 

Opinion of the Court 

2 
In addition to alleging conscience injuries, the doctors cite
various  monetary  and  related  injuries  that  they  allegedly 
will  suffer  as  a  result  of  FDA’s  actions—in  particular,
diverting  resources  and  time  from  other  patients  to  treat
patients with mifepristone complications; increasing risk of
liability suits from treating those patients; and potentially 
increasing insurance costs.

Those  standing  allegations  suffer  from  the  same 
problem—a  lack  of  causation.    The  causal  link  between 
FDA’s  regulatory  actions  and  those  alleged  injuries  is  too 
speculative  or  otherwise  too  attenuated  to  establish 
standing.

To begin with, the claim that the doctors will incur those
injuries  as  a  result  of  FDA’s  2016  and  2021  relaxed 
regulations lacks record support and is highly speculative.
The  doctors  have  not  offered  evidence  tending  to  suggest
that  FDA’s  deregulatory  actions  have  both  caused  an
increase  in  the  number  of  pregnant  women  seeking 
treatment from the plaintiff doctors and caused a resulting 
diversion  of  the  doctors’  time  and  resources  from  other 
patients.  Moreover,  the  doctors  have  not  identified  any 
instances in the past where they have been sued or required 
to  pay  higher  insurance  costs  because  they  have  treated 
pregnant women suffering mifepristone complications.  Nor 
have  the  plaintiffs  offered  any  persuasive  evidence  or 
reason to believe that the future will be different. 

In any event, and perhaps more to the point, the law has 
never  permitted  doctors  to  challenge  the  government’s
loosening  of  general  public  safety  requirements  simply 
because more individuals might then show up at emergency
rooms or in doctors’ offices with follow-on injuries.  Stated 
otherwise,  there  is  no  Article  III  doctrine  of  “doctor 
standing”  that  allows  doctors  to  challenge  general 

—————— 
175 (1974); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U. S. 727, 739 (1972).