Supreme Court to allow emergency abortion care in Idaho for now Despite state restrictions on the procedure, according to a copy of an as-yet-unpublished opinion published by Bloomberg Law after it briefly appeared in the court website Wednesday.
The decision, which has not been announced, would mean that while the litigation moves through the courts, hospitals could perform emergency abortions to stabilize patients without being subject to prosecution under Idaho’s abortion ban.
Although the magistrates did not rule on the merits of the case, their decision is equivalent to At least a temporary victory for the Biden administration, which has fought to protect abortion access since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
According to a copy of the opinion, the court’s ruling would restore a lower court decision that had allowed emergency abortion care while the case continues. The court had stayed that lower court ruling months ago, in an emergency action, before hearing arguments on the matter in April.
It is extremely rare (perhaps unprecedented) for a Supreme Court ruling to be posted on the court’s website before it is issued, and it is possible that the document that was posted may differ from the opinion when it was announced. The landmark decision that overturned Roe, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization also went public early, in that case through a leak to the news organization Politico.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman said Wednesday that the release of the Idaho decision was accidental, cautioning that no ruling had been released.
“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website,” spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement. “The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course.”
The text published by Bloomberg shows the justices voting 6-3 with conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissenting.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say the court should have decisively resolved the matter rather than taking the interim step of walking away. a ruling of a lower court in force while the litigation continues.
“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It’s a delay,” she wrote in a partial disagreement. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people suffering from emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious situation because their doctors do not know what the law requires.”
Justice Elena Kagan, who also joined the majority but writing separately, noted that Idaho’s strict ban had forced the state’s largest emergency services provider to airlift pregnant women out of state about every two weeks. The court’s decision “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its ban on abortion when termination of pregnancy is necessary to prevent serious harm to a woman’s health,” wrote Kagan, who she joined partly by Jackson and entirely by Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
The White House and Idaho Attorney General Raúl R. Labrador declined to comment on the ruling until it is issued.
The case centers on the nearly four-decade-old Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, known as EMTALA, which requires hospitals that receive federal funds to stabilize or transfer patients who need emergency care.
The Biden administration sued Idaho in 2022, saying the state’s strict abortion ban conflicts with federal law. Idaho prohibits almost all abortions and imposes sentences of up to five years in prison for doctors who perform the procedure, except when it is “necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.”
The administration said EMTALA requires abortions. for pregnant people if necessary to address non-life threatening health conditions, such as organ failure or loss of fertility.
In August 2022, a district judge sided with the Biden administration and said that because of hospitals’ obligations under federal law, Idaho doctors cannot be punished for performing an abortion to protect the health of a woman. patient.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then allowed the state to enforce the law, before an entire panel of judges on the same appeals court again blocked Idaho’s ability to punishing emergency room doctors while appeals continued.
In January, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case in response to Idaho’s emergency request and said the law could take effect while it heard arguments and deliberated.
as plain While a majority of five justices appear to agree that the high court should stay away from the issue for now, the separate opinions suggest different views on whether federal law preempts Idaho’s ban in emergency situations.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, said it was premature for the Supreme Court to intervene at this time because the two sides’ positions “are still evolving.” ” and the gap between what the government says EMTALA requires in terms of emergency abortion care and what Idaho says its law allows, had narrowed since the justices agreed to take the case on an emergency basis.
In his dissenting opinion, Alito — who wrote the Dobbs decision — agreed with Jackson that the court should not have sidestepped the issue at hand.
The question of whether federal law preempts state law “is more ripe for decision than ever,” he wrote. “Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotive and highly politicized issue the case presents. “That’s unfortunate.”
Alito said EMTALA does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho’s ban, in part because the federal statute does not specifically mention abortion, but does include language directing hospitals to protect an “unborn child” from any damage.
Kagan said bipartisan majorities in Congress added language to the statute to ensure that a pregnant woman could “demand care for her unborn child and herself.”
Abortion rights groups on Wednesday criticized the justices for failing to protect emergency abortion in their earlier action in the case, and said the briefly released decision appears to leave major questions about abortion access for another day.
The court “had the opportunity to make clear that the federal EMTALA law protects the right to emergency abortion in all states, regardless of each state’s abortion ban, and they decided not to do so,” said Alexis McGill, president and executive director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Johnson said in a statement. “Access is still threatened across the country, but for now, this means patients in Idaho will be able to get the care they need, in accordance with federal law, after seven months of pregnant people suffering in legal limbo unnecessary and possibly deadly. .”
The case is one of two before the high court this term that will shape abortion access nationwide after the dismantling of Roe, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion.
In early June, the justices unanimously rejected a challenge to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone, saying the anti-abortion doctors who brought the suit did not have standing to do so.
The court’s involuntary release of the EMTALA opinion on Wednesday came on one of the final days of its term, with about 10 cases still unannounced to the public.
Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law who follows the Supreme Court closely, said it was virtually unheard of for the court to accidentally release an opinion.
“This was an unforced error,” Blackman said.
Dan Diamond, Justin Jouvenal and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
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