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Texas challenges HHS guidance that pharmacies can't turn away people who have a prescription for a drug that may end a pregnancy

CNN  — 

Texas filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging guidance issued by the Biden administration in July asserting that federal law does not allow pharmacies to turn away people who have a prescription for a drug that may end a pregnancy.

The lawsuit was filed in a division of Texas’ Western District Court, which almost guarantees the case will be before US District Judge David Counts, a Trump-appointed judge.

Texas argues that the policy violates the Constitution and federal law by using federal health programs to force pharmacies to carry abortion drugs in states where abortion is banned.

“By requiring pharmacies that receive Medicare and Medicaid funds – including retail pharmacies operated by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center – to dispense abortifacients when the life of the mother is not in danger, the Pharmacy Mandate flouts Dobbs’s holding that States may regulate abortion and directly infringes on Texas’s sovereign and quasisovereign authority,” the lawsuit states.

The US Department of Health and Human Services – which issued the guidance and whose leader, Secretary Xavier Becerra, is the defendant in Texas’ lawsuit – did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Texas has sued or threatened to sue over other attempts by the Biden administration to mitigate the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned the precedent that protected abortion rights nationwide.

Medication abortion, a two-pill regimen for ending a pregnancy, has become a particularly acute flashpoint in the post-Dobbs abortion landscape.