The Fifth Circuit, reversed more than any other appeals court, has a reputation for taking extreme positions.
The Fifth Circuit is based in New Orleans and hears appeals from federal trial courts in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. But sober legal analysts say it does its most distinctive work in places that are, shall we say, hard to locate on conventional maps.
Some Fifth Circuit rulings are “delivered from Crazy Town,” Irv Gornstein, the executive director of Georgetown’s Supreme Court Institute, said in 2023.
Sarah Isgur, the author of “Last Branch Standing,” a new book on the Supreme Court, said the appeals court was working from the outskirts of a different municipality when it severely limited access last week to a widely used abortion pill.
The court’s central rationale in that case was “Bonkers Town-adjacent” if not “full Bonkers Town,” Isgur, who was a Justice Department official in the first Trump administration, said on Monday on the “Advisory Opinions” podcast.
Lawyers for Louisiana, which persuaded the Fifth Circuit to require the Food and Drug Administration to roll back a regulation that allowed the pills to be prescribed by telemedicine and mailed to patients, welcomed the ruling.
“The Biden F.D.A.’s unlawful authorization of mail-order abortion drugs was meant to nullify state laws that protect life,” said Erin Hawley, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.