The Supreme Court said this on Thursday to dismiss a case about emergency abortions in Idaho, temporarily clearing the way for women in the state to get an abortion when their health is at risk.
The unsigned one-sentence decision declared that the case had been “carelessly assigned,” meaning a majority of the justices had changed their minds about the need to hear the case now. It reinstates a lower court ruling that had halted Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion and allowed emergency abortions in hospitals if necessary to protect the mother’s health while the case moves through the courts.
The ruling, which did not rule on the merits of the case, was a good reflection of a version that briefly appeared on the court’s website a day earlier and was reported by BloombergA court spokeswoman acknowledged on Wednesday that the publications unit had “accidentally and briefly uploaded a document” and said a ruling in the case would be issued in due course.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced the court’s decision, as is customary with unsigned judgments.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented in part from the court’s decision and argued that the justices should have heard the case on its merits, read her dissent from the bench. Such a move is rare and indicates a deep disagreement.
The consolidated cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, focus on whether a federal law aimed at ensuring emergency care for every patient supersedes Idaho’s abortion ban, one of the nation’s strictest. The state prohibits the procedure with limited exceptions unless a woman’s life is in danger.
The decision was essentially 6-3, with three conservative justices siding with the liberal wing, albeit with separate writings and reasoning, in saying they would drop the case.
The dispute marked the first time the court has grappled with the issue of statewide restrictions on abortion, many of which were quickly enacted after the court struck down a constitutional right to the procedure two years ago.
The ruling handed a temporary victory to the Biden administration, which had turned to federal law as one of its few, albeit limited, ways to challenge state abortion bans and preserve access after the court overturned Roe v. Wade.
It also amounted to a second victory, however modest, for abortion rights in recent weeks. This month, the court rejected a challenge to the longstanding approval of a widely used abortion pill, saying an umbrella group of anti-abortion medical organizations and doctors that brought the case lacked standing. Although the decision preserved the availability of the pill, the court did not rule on the merits of the case.
Still, as with the abortion pill, the emergency abortion case — and the underlying issue of state versus federal law — will continue in the lower courts.
Supporters of the right to abortion pointed out that possibility, but were also happy with the outcome.
“We are relieved at this point, but not exactly celebrating,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Women with serious pregnancy complications and the hospital staff who care for them need clarity now.”
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said at a news conference that he was undeterred. “We feel pretty strongly that we’re going to ultimately win this case,” he said, adding that he expected the lawsuit or a parallel case in Texas could reach the justices again.
The decision, which came just hours before the first presidential debate, underscored the stakes for the upcoming election, where abortion remains a priority for both parties. Access to abortion is widely popular, and the issue has mobilized voters eager to overturn anti-abortion referendums at the ballot box.
President Biden applauded the court’s decision in a statement.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling ensures that women in Idaho have access to the emergency medical care they need while this case heads back to the lower courts,” Biden said. “No woman should be denied care, forced to wait until she is near death, or forced to flee her home state to get the health care she needs.”
Idaho had asked the justices 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 judges had temporarily reinstated the ban.
Under Idaho law, abortion is illegal except in cases of incest, rape, some cases of nonviable pregnancies, or when it is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” Doctors who perform abortions may face criminal penalties, prison time and loss of their license to practice medicine.
The Biden administration had argued that the ban violated federal law and that federal law should overrule the ban. Idaho claimed that the Biden administration had misinterpreted federal law in an effort to circumvent state bans and essentially convert hospitals into legal abortion clinics.
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 concurring opinions. The court’s remaining conservatives, Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.
In her partial concurrence and partial dissent, Judge Jackson wrote that she would have made a decision on the merits of the case and that the federal law at issue, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, overrides Idaho’s strict ban.
Justice Elena Kagan said in a dissenting opinion that the practical outcome of the court’s decision would avoid serious consequences.
Federal law, she wrote, “unambiguously requires” that hospitals receiving Medicare funding provide all treatments necessary to stabilize a patient, including pregnant women.
Judge Jackson agreed. When the court allowed Idaho’s abortion ban to remain in place temporarily, a “months-long catastrophe” ensued that could have been avoided, she wrote. Instead, she noted, “Idaho doctors were forced to stand back and watch their patients suffer, or to ensure their patients were airlifted out.”
Dismissing the case, she warned, was a cause for concern, a path that simply allowed the court to “avoid issues it does not want to decide.”
“There is simply no good reason not to resolve this conflict now,” she wrote.
Even when Justice Alito sided with Judge Jackson and said the court should have heard the case on its merits, he came to the opposite conclusion as she did. Idaho’s abortion ban applied to emergency rooms, he wrote.
On the contrary, he added, federal law requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding “to treat an ‘unborn child’ and not to abort.”
He regretted that the court was not willing to tackle a polarizing issue.
“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 the case raises.”
Judge Barrett, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Judge Kavanaugh, seemed to chart a middle ground of sorts.
The case should play out for now in the lower courts, she wrote, where a more complete picture of the facts could emerge.
The parameters of Idaho law had “changed significantly — twice” since the litigation began, she added, and the parties’ positions had “left the scope of the dispute unclear at best.”
Eileen Sullivan contributed to the reporting.
