Supreme Court’s Thomas questions groups’ ability to challenge US law | WSAU News/Talk 550 AM · 99.9 FM

Author: Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent set in 1977 that allowed advocacy groups, trade associations and other organizations to routinely bring court challenges to government policies on behalf of their members.

Thomas made his case in an opinion that followed the Supreme Court’s 9-0 majority ruling rejecting efforts to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, used in more than 60% of U.S. abortions.

The court found that four anti-abortion medical associations and several individual physicians lacked the legal standing to pursue their case, challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the pill and subsequent actions to ease access to it.

The legal battle over the drug may not be over yet, however, as a federal judge in Texas, where the case was originally filed, has allowed three Republican-led states that ban abortion to join the case as plaintiffs.

Thomas, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, agreed with Thursday’s ruling, saying he correctly found the Hippocratic Medicine Alliance and other plaintiffs had failed to prove that the FDA’s actions harmed them, which is necessary to bring a lawsuit to trial. in court.

But Thomas wrote separately to highlight what he believed were “constitutional concerns” and “serious problems” arising from the legal doctrine that an association can sue on behalf of its members and rely on its standing.

Thomas said the Texas-based Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine’s attempt to use the doctrine to assert its position illustrates a problem with it. The group is an association of other groups of doctors and sought standing to sue based on alleged harm to these doctors.

“Where appropriate, we should clarify how the Constitution allows for association status,” Thomas wrote.

Thomas essentially attacked the long-established legal doctrine on which associations are based, from the nation’s largest business lobby – the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – to environmental groups and pro-gun rights organizations that challenge government policies with lawsuits on behalf of their members .

Just last year, a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which sued on behalf of its members, convinced the Supreme Court to limit the consideration of race in college admissions.

Thomas said the Supreme Court, as far as he could tell, didn’t even consider such a doctrine until the late 1950s, citing a civil rights-era case involving the NAACP civil rights group.

The Supreme Court later recognized the ability of member associations to do so in its 1977 ruling in Hunt v. Washington State’s Apple Advertising Commission, as long as their members otherwise had the ability to sue on their own.

But Thomas said the doctrine “appears to be harsh” on the traditional requirement in Article III of the U.S. Constitution – the constitutional provision that defines the power of the U.S. government’s judicial branch – that plaintiffs must show a violation of their rights in order to have a claim heard in the court.

“If an individual member of an association is injured, our doctrine allows that association to seek help for all of its members — even if the association has tens of millions of other members who have not been injured,” Thomas wrote.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi)