The Supreme Court is being asked to reverse an appellate ruling that would cut off mail-order access to a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States.

The case would be the first major abortion dispute decided by the Supreme Court since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year. That ruling has led to bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy in 15 states, with some exceptions, and once cardiac activity can be detected, which is around six weeks, in two others.

In appeals filed Friday, the Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of mifepristone, argued that federal judges should not second-guess the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug or the conditions under which it is dispensed.

A federal appeals court ruling in August would revoke approval for sending the drug through the mail and would shorten, from the current 10 weeks to seven weeks, the time during which mifepristone can be used in pregnancy.

The justices previously intervened in the case in April to assure the availability of mifepristone while a challenge proceeds in the federal courts. The Supreme Court is widely expected to agree to hear the case and have the final word, probably by early summer 2024 and in the middle of presidential and congressional campaigns.

In urging the justices to reverse the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for Danco wrote, “For the women and teenage girls, health care providers, and States that depend on FDA’s actions to ensure safe and effective reproductive health care is available, this case matters tremendously.”

The Justice Department said the appeals court ignored a scientific judgment about mifepristone’s safety and effectivness since its approval in 2000.

“To the government’s knowledge, the decisions below mark the first time any court has restricted access to an FDA-approved drug based on disagreement with FDA’s expert judgment about the conditions required to assure that drug’s safe use — much less done so after those conditions had been in effect for years,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote.

Abortion opponents filed their challenge to mifepristone in November and initially won a sweeping ruling in April revoking the drug’s approval entirely. The appeals court left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.

When the high court voted in April to block any changes until a final decision, Justices Samuel Alito, the author of last year’s decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas said they would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while appeals played out.

Women seeking to end their pregnancies in the first 10 weeks without more invasive surgical abortion can take mifepristone, along with a second drug, misoprostol. The pills are now used in more than half of all abortions in the U.S.

Misoprostol also is used to treat other medical conditions. Health care providers have said they could switch to misoprostol if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain. Misoprostol is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

The FDA has eased the terms of mifepristone’s use over the years, including allowing it to be sent through the mail in states that allow access and reducing the dosage that is needed to end a pregnancy.

West Virginia can restrict the sale of the abortion pill, despite federal regulators’ approval of it as a safe and effective medication, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers determined Thursday that the near-total abortion ban signed by Republican Gov. Jim Justice in September 2022 takes precedence over approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“The Supreme Court has made it clear that regulating abortion is a matter of health and safety upon which States may appropriately exercise their police power,” Chambers wrote in a decision dismissing most challenges brought against the state by abortion pill manufacturer GenBioPro, Inc. in a January lawsuit filed in the state southern district’s Huntington division.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that provided nationwide access to abortion, most GOP-controlled states have enacted or adopted abortion bans of some kind, restricting abortion pills by default. All have been challenged in court.

Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills, as abortion-rights proponents bring test cases to challenge state restrictions.

In West Virginia’s case, regulation of medical professionals “is arguably a field in which the states have an even stronger interest and history of exercising authority,” than the federal government, Chambers decided.

GenBioPro, Inc., the country’s only manufacturer of a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, had argued that the state cannot block access to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug.

Chambers dismissed the majority of the manufacturer’s challenges, finding there is “no disputing that health, medicine, and medical licensure are traditional areas of state authority.”

The initial online search of a state website that led a central Kansas police chief to raid a local weekly newspaper was legal, a spokesperson for the agency that maintains the site said Monday, as the newspaper remains under investigation.

Earlier this month, after a local restaurant owner accused the Marion County Record of illegally accessing information about her, the Marion police chief obtained warrants to search the newspaper’s offices and the home of its publisher, as well as the home of a City Council member who also accessed the driver’s license database.

The police chief led the Aug. 11 raids and said in the affidavits used to obtain the warrants that he had probable cause to believe that the newspaper and the City Council member had violated state laws against identity theft or computer crimes.

Both the City Council member and the newspaper have said they received a copy of the document about the status of the restaurant owner’s license without soliciting it. The document disclosed the restaurant’s license number and her date of birth, information required to check the status of a person’s license online and gain access to a more complete driving record. The police chief maintains they broke state laws to do that, while the newspaper and Herbel’s attorneys say they didn’t.

The raid on the Record put it and its hometown of about 1,900 residents in the center of a debate about press freedoms protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Kansas’ Bill of Rights. It also exposed divisions in the town over local politics and the newspaper’s coverage of the community and put an intense spotlight on Police Chief Gideon Cody.

Department of Revenue spokesperson Zack Denney said it’s legal to access the driver’s license database online using information obtained independently. The department’s Division of Vehicles issues licenses.

“That’s legal,” he said. “The website is public facing, and anyone can use it.”

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation continues to probe the newspaper’s actions. The KBI reports to state Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, while the Department of Revenue is under Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s authority.

Wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande. Razor wire strung across private property without permission. Bulldozers changing the very terrain of America’s southern border.

For more than two years, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has escalated measures to keep migrants from entering the U.S., pushing legal boundaries with a go-it-alone bravado along the state’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border with Mexico. Now blowback over the tactics is widening, including from within Texas.

A state trooper’s account of officers denying migrants water in 100-degree Fahrenheit (37.7 Celsius) temperatures and razor wire leaving asylum-seekers bloodied has prompted renewed criticism. The Mexican government, some Texas residents along the border and the Biden administration are pushing back. On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department sued Abbott over the buoy barrier that it says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns, asking a federal court to require Texas to dismantle it.

bbott, who cruised to a third term in November while promising tougher border crackdowns, has used disaster declarations as the legal bedrock for some measures.

Critics call that a warped view. “There are so many ways that what Texas is doing right now is just flagrantly illegal,” said David Donatti, an attorney for the Texas American Civil Liberties Union.

Abbott did not respond to requests for comment. He has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden’s border policies, tweeting Friday that they “encourage migrants to risk their lives crossing illegally through the Rio Grande, instead of safely and legally over a bridge.”

The Biden administration has said illegal border crossings have declined significantly since new immigration rules took effect in May.

A federal judge ruled on Friday that nearly all of North Carolina’s revised 12-week abortion law scheduled to begin this weekend can take effect, while temporarily blocking one rule that doctors feared could expose them to criminal penalties.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles sets aside that rule but allows the law’s remaining provisions to begin on Saturday while litigation continues.

Abortion providers had last week requested a blanket order halting all of the July 1 restrictions pending their court challenge. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a physician said several sections in the newly revised law were so vague and seemingly contradictory that doctors could unintentionally break the law, leaving them unable to care for women seeking legal abortions.

But the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed legislation this week revising or repealing nearly all of the challenged provisions, making arguments against most of them moot. Among other things, the lawmakers clarified that medication abortions will be legal in nearly all cases through 12 weeks, and that a lawful abortion remains an exception to North Carolina’s fetal homicide statute.

Eagles, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, had said in court that it would be overly broad to block enforcement of the entire law. Instead, she directed that for at least the next two weeks, the state cannot enforce a rule saying doctors must document the existence of a pregnancy within the uterus before conducting a medication abortion.

The abortion providers’ lawyers argued that the language raised questions about whether abortion pills can be dispensed when it’s too early in a pregnancy to locate an embryo using an ultrasound — subjecting a provider to potentially violating the law.

Former President Donald Trump’s federal arraignment in Miami on Tuesday was historic — yet virtually invisible to the public.

In an era when people are accustomed to instantly available images and sounds of important events, Trump’s not-guilty plea to charges of hoarding classified documents was a step back in time. Hundreds of photographers and television crews were at the courthouse — many broadcasting live from outside — but they couldn’t show the key moments inside the courtroom.

Efforts by news organizations to loosen restrictions that generally prohibit cameras in federal courtrooms failed, despite the event’s unprecedented nature. It was a stark contrast from Trump’s arraignment in New York earlier this year.

Trump eventually found a way Tuesday to fill the void after leaving the courthouse — with a stop at a Cuban restaurant, where he could bathe in the cheers of supporters.

“This is the visual he wants — I just left the court. I’m good,” said CNN’s John King. Earlier, he arrived at the courthouse to be booked and enter his plea and then left without being seen. Cameras followed a motorcade of black vehicles with tinted windows.

“This is a little bit old-fashioned,” said Fox News Channel’s Mark Meredith. “We’re not going to be able to see what’s going on in the courtroom.”

News organizations had petitioned the court to allow photographs of Trump to be taken prior to his arraignment, and permit the public release of an audio recording of the court proceeding after it was done. Yet on Monday night, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman denied the requests.

A judge overseeing the case against Bryan Kohberger, charged with killing four University of Idaho students last fall, heard arguments Friday over a gag order that largely bars attorneys and other parties in the case from speaking with news reporters.

A coalition of more than 30 media organizations has challenged the order, saying it violates the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech and a free press, as has a lawyer for one of the victim’s families. But prosecutors and the defendant’s lawyers insist it’s needed to prevent prejudicial news coverage that could damage Kohberger’s right to a fair trial.

“It remains appropriate to have an Order reminding lawyers and their agents of the rules of engagement in this country and that we try cases in court, not in the press,” one of Kohberger’s attorneys, Jay Weston Logsdon, wrote in a memo to the court this week.

Second District Judge John C. Judge indicated he would rule later on the gag order and on a separate issue of whether to allow cameras in the courtroom during further proceedings. Kohberger, 28, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary in connection with the stabbing deaths in Moscow, Idaho, on Nov. 13, 2022. Judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf last month. Prosecutors have not said if they will seek the death penalty.

The bodies of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found at a rental home across the street from the University of Idaho campus. The slayings shocked the rural Idaho community and neighboring Pullman, Washington, where Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at Washington State University.

The case has garnered widespread publicity, and in January Latah County Magistrate Judge Megan Marshall issued a “nondissemination” order barring attorneys, law enforcement agencies and others associated with the case from talking with the press or issuing statements unless they are quoting directly from a court document.