Supreme Court appears to allow emergency abortions in Idaho for now

The Supreme Court appears set to temporarily allow emergency abortions in Idaho when a woman’s health is at risk, according to a copy of what seemed to be the opinion which briefly appeared on the court’s website on Wednesday.

The unsigned opinion dismissed the case on procedural grounds and stated that the court would not consider the merits of the dispute for the time being, the 22-page document said. was published by Bloomberg News. Such a decision would reinstate a lower federal court ruling that had suspended Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion and said hospitals in the state could perform emergency abortions if necessary to protect the mother’s health.

The case revolves around whether a federal law requiring emergency care for every patient overrides Idaho’s strict abortion ban, which prohibits the procedure with few exceptions unless the woman’s life is in danger.

It was unclear whether the document was final, and a court spokeswoman said only that a ruling would eventually be made in the consolidated cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States.

“The court’s publications unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the court’s website,” spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said. “The court’s opinions in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be released in due course.”

The split outlined in the unsigned opinion, labeled “per curiam,” meaning “by the court,” was essentially 6-3, with Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson writing a partial concurrence and a partial dissent. She wrote that she would have concluded that federal law overrides Idaho’s strict ban, adding that she believed the Supreme Court should consider the issue immediately, rather than sending it back to the lower courts. court.

The liberal justices, along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., all wrote or joined in their concurring opinions. Three of the court’s conservatives, Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.

The document posted online was dated Wednesday. But the court issued only two rulings that morning. Neither of them concerned abortion.

If the document represents a final decision, it would be the second time this term that the justices have abandoned their ruling on the merits of abortion. Wednesday’s opinion, which declared that the case had been “negligently assigned,” suggested that the justices would not rule on the substance, but would simply say that women could continue to have access to emergency abortions while the case works its way through the Courts.

In her concurrence, Justice Elena Kagan said the decision “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when terminating a pregnancy is necessary to prevent serious harm to a woman’s health.”

In her view, she added, the federal law in question, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, “unequivocally” requires hospitals receiving federal funding to provide any medical treatment necessary to stabilize a patient.

Justice Jackson agreed with that assessment. In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court also allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to remain in effect temporarily, leading to what she described as a wholly unnecessary “months-long catastrophe.” Doctors in the state “were forced to stand back and watch their patients suffer, or arrange for their patients to be transported out of Idaho,” she added.

However, she differed from the majority, saying that a dismissal on procedural grounds before the court should not become a way to postpone certain issues.

“We cannot simply turn back the clock to the way things were before the court intervened in this case,” Judge Jackson wrote. “There is simply no good reason not to resolve this conflict now.”

In his dissent, Justice Alito argued that the court should have ruled on the merits of the case, calling the dismissal of the case a puzzling reversal.

“That question is ripe for decision, as it will someday be,” Justice Alito wrote. “Apparently the court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case raises. That is regrettable.”

To him, he wrote, federal law clearly “does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law.” Rather, he added, it requires that hospitals receiving Medicare funding “treat, not abort, an ‘unborn child’.”

Judge Barrett appeared to find a middle ground. Even as she wrote that she agreed to dismiss, the scope of Idaho law had “changed significantly — twice” since the litigation began, and the parties’ positions had “rendered the scope of the dispute unclear at best.”

Her dissent echoed questions she raised during oral argument, when she focused on the circumstances in which state law allows emergency abortions and when such procedures are prohibited.

The apparently accidental publication of the opinion in the case, in the hectic last days of the legislative term, was in a way reminiscent of the leaking of the draft opinion that nullified the constitutional right to abortion.

While abortion rights advocates were pleased with the outcome of the Idaho case, they also cautioned that it was not a clear victory.

“If the leaked view is accurate, it’s clear that pregnant people are not out of the woods yet — not by a long shot,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “Make no mistake: The Supreme Court had the opportunity to rule once and for all that every pregnant person has the basic right to emergency abortion care, but it appears it has not.”

It reflected the reaction this month after the court rejected a bid from a group of anti-abortion medical groups and doctors seeking to limit the availability of a common abortion pill used in most abortions in the country. By ruling that the plaintiffs had no standing to challenge the drug’s approval, the court sidestepped the merits of the case and preserved widespread access to the drug, mifepristone.

A broad decision in the Idaho case could have implications for the more than a dozen states that have enacted near-total bans since the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The federal emergency room law was seen as one of the few — and limited — ways the Biden administration has sought to challenge state bans on abortions and preserve access, though the legal fights involve only a limited number and type of patients.

Idaho had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after an 11-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit temporarily blocked the law. By agreeing to hear the case, the justices reinstated the ban.

Under Idaho law, abortion is illegal except in cases of incest, rape, certain cases of nonviable pregnancies, or when it is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” Doctors who perform abortions can face criminal penalties, prison sentences, and loss of their license to practice medicine.

The Biden administration had argued that the ban violated federal law and that federal law should override the ban. Idaho argued that the Biden administration had misinterpreted federal law in an effort to circumvent state bans, effectively turning hospitals into legal abortion sites.

Julie Tate research contributed.