Previously published Supreme Court ruling allows abortions in emergencies despite bans

Although the judges did not rule on the merits of the case, their decision amounts to at least a temporary victory for the Biden administration, which has struggled to protect abortion access since the high court struck down Roe v. two years ago.

According to a copy of the opinion, the court’s ruling would reinstate a lower court ruling that had allowed emergency abortion care while the case continues. The court had paused 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 decision to be published on the court’s website before the decision is issued, and it is possible that the published document may differ from the opinion when it is announced. The important decision that was overturned Roe, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationwas also released in advance, in this case through a leak to the news organization Politico.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman said Wednesday that the publication of the Idaho decision was accidental, cautioning that no decision was made public.

“The Court Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court website,” spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement. “The opinion of the Court in Moyle v. U.S It is Idaho v. U.S will be issued in due course.”

The text posted by Bloomberg shows the justices voting 6-3, with conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch in dissent.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say the court should have resolved the issue decisively rather than taking the interim step of leaving a lower court ruling in effect while the litigation continues.

“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It’s a delay,” she wrote in partial dissent. “While this court delays and the country waits, pregnant people facing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”

Justice Elena Kagan, who also joined the majority but wrote separately, noted that Idaho’s strict ban forced the state’s largest emergency services provider to transport pregnant women out of state approximately every two weeks. The court’s ruling “will prevent Idaho from enforcing an abortion ban when termination of pregnancy is necessary to prevent serious harm to a woman’s health,” wrote Kagan, who joined in part by Jackson and in full by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The White House and Idaho Attorney General Raúl R. Labrador declined to comment on the decision 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 on doctors who perform the procedure, except when “necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.”

The administration said EMTALA requires abortions for pregnant women, if necessary, to manage threatening health conditions that are not life-threatening, 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’ obligation under federal law, Idaho doctors cannot be punished for performing an abortion to protect a patient’s health.

Then a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed the state to enforce the law — before a full panel of judges from the same appeals court again blocked Idaho’s ability to punish emergency room doctors. as long as resources continued.

In January, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case in response to Idaho’s emergency request and said the law could go into effect while it heard arguments and deliberated.

Even as A five-justice majority appears to agree that the high court should stay out of the issue for now, the separate opinions suggest differing views on whether federal law precludes 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 has narrowed since the justices agreed to take the case on an emergency basis.

In his dissent, 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 as ripe for decision as it will ever be,” he wrote. “Apparently, the Court simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents. This is regrettable.”

Alito said EMTALA does not require hospitals to perform abortions, violating Idaho’s ban — in part because the federal statute does not specifically mention abortion, but includes language directing hospitals to protect an “unborn child” from harm.

Kagan said the language was added to the statute by bipartisan congressional majorities to ensure that a pregnant woman could “require care for her fetus and herself.”

Abortion advocacy groups on Wednesday criticized the justices for failing to protect emergency abortions in their earlier actions in the case, and said the briefly publicized ruling appeared to leave important questions about abortion access for another day.

The court “had the opportunity to make clear that the federal EMTALA law protects the right to abortion in an emergency in all states — regardless of the state’s abortion ban — and they chose not to do so,” said Alexis McGill, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Johnson said in a statement. “Access is still under threat across the country, but for now, this means patients in Idaho will be able to get the care they need under federal law – after seven months of pregnant women suffering in unnecessary legal limbo and possibly deadly. .”

The case is one of two before the high court this term that will shape abortion access across the country following the dismantling of the Roewhich guaranteed the 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 lawsuit lacked standing to do so.

The court’s inadvertent release of the EMTALA ruling on Wednesday came on one of the final days of its term, with about 10 cases yet to be announced to the public.

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law who closely follows the Supreme Court, said it was virtually unheard of for the court to release an opinion accidentally.

“This was an unforced error,” Blackman said.

Dan Diamond, Justin Jouvenal and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.