By Michael Shepherd - April 10, 2023
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📷 Bottles of the drug misoprostol sit on a table at the West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on March 15, 2022. (AP photo by Allen G. Breed)

Good morning from Augusta. Here's the legislative committee schedule for Monday, including work sessions on vaccine and school safety bills and Sunday hunting hearings.

What we're watching today

Maine's liberal laws don't blunt the latest anti-abortion court ruling. The landmark June ruling overturning federal abortion rights had no effect in Maine, which has permissive laws on the subject. Those same laws cannot do much about a conservative judge's Friday decision to halt federal approval of the drug that constitutes the nation's most common abortion method.

The legal environment is now highly unsettled around the drug mifepristone. After a Texas judge ruled against the administration of President Joe Biden last week, another federal court issued a conflicting ruling that preserves access to the drug for now in Maine, 16 other states and the District of Columbia. The standoff now needs to be ironed out by other courts.

Providers in the region will be using the most common method combining mifepristone with misopristol for now. As a rural state, Maine has one of the highest shares of medication abortions in the nation. If mifepristone is banned, they would continue under a misopristol-only method that is considered safe but comes with more side effects than the preferred method.

Of course, misopristol could also be at risk if the conservative legal theory works to ban mifepristone. These types of telehealth abortions are already a point of emphasis for anti-abortion activists. In Maine, a group of Republicans has submitted a bill that would bar prescriptions of abortion drugs that way.

All of this is despite the drugs being considered safe and effective by the federal Food and Drug Administration when taken as directed. The Texas judge's ruling is an unprecedented shot at the federal agency's authority to approve drugs. Some Democrats are calling upon the Biden administration to ignore the ruling, but it is unlikely to do that since it may harm an appeal.

The legal path here is far from certain, but Maine would see significant policy changes if the Texas judge's ruling won out in the end. Last year's decision overturning Roe v. Wade added up to federalism in action, with states now maintaining lots of access to abortion like Maine does or almost none at all. This lawsuit shows how the system can be used against some states.

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News and notes

📷 From left, Betty Johnson, Diane Denk, David Bright and Rick Bennett are sworn in as Maine's presidential electors at the State House in Augusta on Dec. 19, 2016. The four electors cast three ballots for Democrat Hillary Clinton and one for Republican Donald Trump. (BDN photo by Gabor Degre)

🗳️ A Republican joins in on yet another Democratic popular vote initiative.

◉ The 2023 bill that would have Maine join the national movement to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote for president was released this week with an interesting list of sponsors.

◉ Rep. Art Bell, D-Yarmouth, is leading the initiative with a list of cosponsors that includes Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, and Sen. Matt Pouliot, R-Augusta. It seeks to allocate Maine's presidential electors to the winner of the national popular vote when states controlling the majority of electors make similar moves.

◉ The Maine Senate passed a similar bill in 2019, but it died in the House. The involvement of top Democrats means it could make it back to the floor this year. Pouliot's involvement is also interesting, given that Republicans generally oppose this shift. He is also squaring off with Democrats on voter ID this year.

👤 The $1 billion hydropower corridor goes before a jury.

◉ A rare jury trial will decide the next step of the legal wrangling on the stalled Central Maine Power Co. corridor, which was rejected by voters in 2021.

◉ The main issue at play will be whether the corridor's builders had "vested rights" in the project before it was halted, something that could decide how far the power of voters extends to properly permitted developments. CMP and its allies have mostly won in court so far, but it has been a slog.

◉ Jury selection comes this morning, followed by opening arguments. The trial is scheduled to last most of this week in Business and Consumer Court in Portland. Any result will likely be appealed to Maine's high court.

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What we're reading

💉 Bangor is collecting more needles than it gives out, but there are more complaints about dirty ones than ever.

✂️ A former Maine lawmaker known for a quixotic secession effort died at 89.

🕵️ Here's how Maine is helping unravel the mysteries of long COVID.

📉 The state's seafood harvest has dropped 120 million pounds since 2012.

🟦 The recent neo-Nazi rally in Portland underlines rising antisemitism here, the Maine Monitor reports.

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