bring suit

But those who did bring suit hardly painted the picture that abortion foes wanted.

"If we believe that there's anything like a commons and that there is a public interest in the commons, then I could bring suit on behalf of all people similarly situated. We could define a class of people. I can say that literally, every person who lives in my city is affected in one way or another by this issue, and therefore could stand to suffer a legal injury that we're asking a court to remedy," Barentine said.

“That would be a violation of the Medicaid Act, but it would not be a violation that any individual or that Planned Parenthood could bring suit about,” she said.

The appellate court found that “only the attorney general of the United States may bring suit” to enforce the key section of the act.

It stretched the law to find that the doctor groups that challenged mifepristone had suffered enough of a “concrete and demonstrable injury” that they had standing to bring suit.