By Rebecca Shabad and Laura Jarrett -
NBC News
A federal judge scheduled a hearing on the use of abortion pills on Monday after a coalition of media organizations pressured him to provide more transparency in the Texas case, which has been closely watched across the country.
Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Trump to the District Court for the Northern District of Texas, announced that the hearing will take place this Wednesday.
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The public notification comes after a lawyer – representing a media coalition that includes NBCUniversal News Group (to which Noticias Telemundo belongs) and The Washington Post – wrote in a letter to Kacsmaryk that his decision not to make public the date of the hearing well in advance was unconstitutional.
The J. Marvin Jones Federal Building and Mary Lou Robinson Courthouse in Amarillo, Texas, where Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will decide the abortion pill case.AP
The lawyer, Peter B. Steffensen, of Southern Methodist University's First Amendment Clinic, cited a Washington Post report over the weekend, revealing that Kacsmaryk had told lawyers in the case that he was not going to announce the hearing date until Tuesday night.
"The court's attempt to delay the announcement, and thus limit the ability of the public – including the press – to attend Wednesday's hearing, is unconstitutional and undermines the important value of public access to court proceedings and records. of the court," Steffensen said.
The public is "intensely interested in this case" and the judge's decision to delay the public announcement of Wednesday's hearing affects "everyone, including those who support the plaintiffs' position and those who support the defendants," he stressed. .
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The WaPost
,
citing multiple sources, reported that Kacsmaryk had a conference call with attorneys Friday to schedule Wednesday's hearing in Amarillo, Texas, but wanted to delay publicly announcing it to lessen the chance of disruptions and possible protests. .
Members of the judge's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News, sister network to Noticias Telemundo.
Restricting the ability of the press and the public to attend a court hearing is rare and can “be justified only by governmental interest, and even then, such restrictions must be carefully crafted to achieve that objective.
There are no such government interests here,” Steffensen wrote.
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The Senate confirmed Kacsmaryk by a vote along party lines in 2019.
The lawsuit at the center of Wednesday's hearing was filed in November by the anti-abortion group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
The group alleges that the process used by the Food and Drug Administration [FDA, for its name in English] for more than 20 years to evaluate and approve one of the two drugs used to terminate pregnancy - mifepristone - was not legal, therefore which should be revoked.
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Abortion pills are used in more than half of all abortions in the country, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports the right to decide whether to end a pregnancy.
If Kacsmaryk makes a decision in the case, the Justice Department can immediately ask a higher court to pause or stay Kacsmaryk's ruling.
But taking that step might not deliver the results the Justice Department expects, given the number of conservative-leaning justices on the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
