Who is Thomas Rice, the Spokane judge who ruled mifepristone is safe?
On the same day a federal judge in Texas blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a key abortion medication, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice in Washington state issued an order prohibiting the FDA from pulling access to the drug – conflicting decisions likely to pressure the FDA and the Biden administration to determine how to enforce them.
Rice, an Obama-appointed judge, ordered the FDA to preserve “the status quo” and retain access in 17 states and D.C.
His ruling stands in contrast to that written in Texas by U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee with long-held antiabortion views.
“Based on the public health and administrative considerations at issue in this case,” Rice wrote in a 31-page decision, ”… the public interest favors a preliminary injunction.” He stopped short of ordering a nationwide injunction sought by the plaintiffs, noting that abortion restrictions vary by state.
Abortion rights groups and the 17 state attorneys general in the case praised Rice’s order, which was largely ignored by antiabortion groups, who were focused on U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision in Texas.
The issue is probably headed to the Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
Here’s what you need to know about Rice, who has placed himself in the middle of one of the most contentious issues in the country.
Who is Judge Thomas Rice?
President Barack Obama nominated Rice on June 29, 2011, to serve as a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
He was confirmed by the Senate 93-4 on March 6, 2012.
Rice was an assistant U.S. attorney in the same district from 1987 until his appointment. From 1986 to 1987, he worked in the tax division of the Justice Department. He received both his law degree and bachelor’s degree from Gonzaga University.
Rice served as the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington from 2016 until 2020.
What other major cases has he ruled on?
Rice ruled on reproductive health in 2018, when Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, along with affiliates from eight other states, requested that the court reverse a Trump administration decision to end funding for a teen pregnancy prevention program.
Rice wrote that “public interest weighs in favor of (Planned Parenthood), as it would prevent harm to the community,” according to the 47-page decision. The government’s appeal was later dismissed.
In June 2020, as Washington state was under emergency restrictions due to COVID-19, a water park, Slidewaters at Lake Chelan, sought a temporary restraining order to open for the summer.
Rice denied the motion, siding with Gov. Jay Inslee.
“It is not the court’s role to second-guess the reasoned public health decisions of other branches of government,” Rice wrote.
In 2014, residents of Yakima, a city in central Washington, claimed their civil rights were being violated by the use in city council elections of at-large voting, a system that has been criticized as discriminatory against minorities.
In Montes v. City of Yakima, Rice wrote that the system at the time “suffocates the voting preferences of the Latino minority” and ruled that the city had to move away from exclusively at-large city council elections.
The ACLU at the time wrote that Rice’s decision was the first in the state to force reforms in a city’s election system.
Why was Rice’s mifepristone decision important for abortion rights?
Rice’s ruling preserves “the status quo” in several states and protects access to mifepristone, the first pill in a two-drug procedure used for more than half of abortions in the United States.
The ruling directly conflicts with Kacsmaryk’s decision – filed minutes earlier in the Amarillo, Texas, federal court – which put on hold FDA approval of the drug.
Rice’s decision underscores the “chaos unleashed by the overruling of Roe, with dueling rulings sending contradictory messages to the FDA,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis and author of “Roe: The History of a National Obsession,” said.
“This kind of split increases the odds that the Supreme Court will take the case,” she said.
Deirdre Bowen, a law professor at Seattle University, explains that the two cases were driven by different legal strategies and “in some sense, it’s not surprising that we got two different rulings.”
The Texas suit, brought by a conservative legal group, argued that the FDA violated its own regulations when it approved mifepristone in 2000.
Meanwhile, the attorneys general behind the suit in Washington state argued that its citizens will experience severe, irreparable damage if the FDA were to withdraw the drug, which is widely considered safe and effective, and sought injunctive relief.
The injunction is temporary but Bowen says Rice’s ruling is significant because it “gives a sense of hope” that individual states can “go to the federal courts still and get the protections they need for their citizens including medical protections such as access to drugs for abortion.”
What has been the reaction to the ruling?
Ellen Rosenblum, the Oregon attorney general co-leading the Washington lawsuit with state attorney general Bob Ferguson, called Rice’s decision a “big win.”
Writing on Twitter, she said: “Don’t be too distracted by the breaking news out of Texas.”
Vice President Kamala Harris called attention to the contradictions between the two rulings in a statement released Friday. “At the same time as the court in Texas issued the decision to try to restrict access to FDA-approved medication, a court in Washington state reached a different conclusion,” she said. “Each person in our nation should have the right to access safe and effective medication which has been approved by the FDA.”
The Justice Department, which plans to appeal the Texas ruling, is reviewing the Washington decision, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday, adding that the department “is committed to protecting Americans’ access to legal reproductive care.”