{"id":67827,"date":"2026-05-17T06:22:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T10:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/southern-appeals-court-repeatedly-overruled-by-supreme-court-on-conservative-rulings\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T06:22:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T10:22:52","slug":"southern-appeals-court-repeatedly-overruled-by-supreme-court-on-conservative-rulings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/southern-appeals-court-repeatedly-overruled-by-supreme-court-on-conservative-rulings\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern Appeals Court Repeatedly Overruled by Supreme Court on Conservative Rulings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The nation’s highest court has once again stepped in to overturn a ruling from a Southern appeals court that legal experts say has pushed conservative judicial decisions beyond what even the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will tolerate.<\/p>

On Thursday, the Supreme Court blocked a May 1 decision from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that would have restricted access to the abortion medication mifepristone. The appeals court ruling would have prevented the drug from being prescribed via telemedicine and sent through the mail.<\/p>

This latest intervention highlights a pattern where the Supreme Court, despite its own 6-3 conservative makeup that has shifted American law significantly rightward, has repeatedly had to rein in the even more aggressive conservative stance of the 5th Circuit.<\/p>

“The 5th Circuit has been willing in the past decade to push the jurisprudential envelope on social issues pretty heavily towards the political conservative side,” explained law professor Sally Brown Richardson of Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.<\/p>

Richardson noted that this aggressive approach is evident in how frequently the Supreme Court chooses to review 5th Circuit decisions on appeal.<\/p>

The 5th Circuit serves as one of 12 regional appeals courts nationwide, handling cases from Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi – three states with deeply conservative political leanings. Republican presidents have appointed 12 of the court’s 17 judges, with six nominations coming from Donald Trump.<\/p>

Conservative activists and Republican officials have increasingly turned to the 5th Circuit as their preferred venue for advancing policy goals. The court has issued significant rulings on abortion access, firearms regulations and religious freedom issues, while dealing setbacks to Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration on immigration and other policies.<\/p>

In Thursday’s action, the Supreme Court issued a brief, unsigned order without explaining its reasoning for halting the 5th Circuit’s abortion pill decision while a lawsuit by Republican-led Louisiana continues. Only two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, publicly disagreed with the decision.<\/p>

Liberal organizations frequently appeal 5th Circuit decisions to the Supreme Court. These appeals have comprised an unusually large portion of the Supreme Court’s caseload in recent years.<\/p>

During the current 2025-2026 term, the Supreme Court has reviewed 10 cases originating from the 5th Circuit, exceeding the number from any other federal appeals court.<\/p>

The same pattern occurred in the 2024-2025 term, with 13 cases from the 5th Circuit reaching the Supreme Court. According to SCOTUSblog data, the Supreme Court reversed the 5th Circuit in 10 of those instances.<\/p>

“You have several examples of cases where the Supreme Court uses the 5th Circuit to pass itself off as maybe more balanced or moderate,” said University of Oklahoma law professor Michael Smith.<\/p>

So far this term, the Supreme Court has upheld only one of four 5th Circuit decisions it has reviewed. Two significant pending cases involve 5th Circuit rulings that struck down a federal prohibition on gun ownership for illegal drug users and imposed restrictions on mail-in voting procedures.<\/p>

In the current abortion medication dispute, the 5th Circuit had blocked a 2023 regulation from the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration allowing telemedicine prescriptions and mail delivery of the drug.<\/p>

Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan authored that decision, arguing the FDA’s approach likely lacked scientific justification and undermined Louisiana’s abortion restrictions enacted after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.<\/p>

“Once lost, that sovereign prerogative of protecting unborn life cannot be regained by legal remedy,” Duncan wrote in his opinion.<\/p>

Drug manufacturers quickly filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, which promptly suspended the 5th Circuit’s ruling.<\/p>

In 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned another 5th Circuit decision restricting mifepristone access, determining that the anti-abortion groups and physicians challenging the medication lacked proper legal standing to bring their case.<\/p>

The Supreme Court also reversed a 2023 5th Circuit ruling that declared unconstitutional a federal law prohibiting gun ownership for individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders. That decision was authored by Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Cory Wilson.<\/p>

In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned another Wilson opinion that had declared the funding structure for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unconstitutional.<\/p>

Additional major cases from the 5th Circuit appear destined for Supreme Court review.<\/p>

The American Civil Liberties Union has pledged to appeal the 5th Circuit’s April decision upholding a Texas law mandating public school displays of the biblical Ten Commandments, a case that tests constitutional separation of church and state principles.<\/p>

That 9-7 ruling was also written by Duncan and supported by all Trump appointees on the 5th Circuit, including Circuit Judges James Ho and Andrew Oldham. All three are viewed as potential Supreme Court candidates if Trump gains another appointment opportunity.<\/p>

Speaking in April, Ho defended judges who embrace originalism, a conservative legal philosophy that interprets the Constitution based on its original meaning at the time of writing.<\/p>

Ho argued that originalist judges face unfair criticism when they issue decisions unpopular with “cultural elites.” He also stated “that it is too often, for too many of us, easier to do what is popular than to do what is right.”<\/p>

“Judges must not be afraid of being booed,” Ho declared.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court has frequently reversed decisions from a Southern appeals court that has issued rulings even more conservative than the nation’s highest court will accept. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, has been overturned by the Supreme Court in multiple high-profile cases involving abortion pills, gun rights and other contentious issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":67826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[833],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/news-1779013372704.jpg?fit=450%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbtNqq-hDZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":49867,"url":"https:\/\/tvdelmarva.com\/wp\/supreme-court-justice-says-trumps-emergency-appeals-hit-historic-highs\/","url_meta":{"origin":67827,"position":0},"title":"Supreme Court Justice Says Trump’s Emergency Appeals Hit Historic Highs","author":"Admin","date":"April 9, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Justice Sonia Sotomayor revealed that the Trump administration filed an unprecedented number of emergency appeals to the Supreme Court. 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