The ruling reinstates a lower court ruling that allowed emergency abortion care while the case continues, according to a copy of the opinion posted by Bloomberg. The court had suspended the lower court ruling as an emergency measure several months ago, before arguments in the case were heard in April.
It is extremely rare, and perhaps unprecedented, for a Supreme Court decision to be posted on the court’s website before the ruling, meaning the posted document may differ from the views expressed at the time the decision was announced. egg, Known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationwas also made public earlier through a leak to the news outlet Politico.
A Supreme Court spokesman cautioned Wednesday that the posting of the Idaho decision was coincidental and that the decision had not been published.
“The court’s publishing department erroneously uploaded the document to the court’s website for a short period of time,” spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said in a statement. “The court’s opinion is Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States It will be published at the appropriate time.”
According to a post by Bloomberg, the justices voted 6-3, with conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissenting.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing in a separate case, said the court should have resolved the issue definitively, rather than taking interim measures. The lower court ruled While the litigation continues.
“Today’s decision is not a victory for Idaho’s pregnant patients; it is a delay,” she wrote in a partial dissent. “While this Court dithers and the nation waits, pregnant patients in need of emergency medical care remain in a precarious position and their doctors are not informed of what the law requires.”
In her concurring opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that Idaho’s strict ban forced the state’s largest ambulance service provider to fly pregnant women out of state roughly every two weeks. “This decision precludes Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when abortion is necessary to prevent serious harm to a woman’s health,” she wrote. Justices Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined in the opinion.
The White House declined to comment until the verdict was announced.
The case centers around a nearly 40-year-old emergency medical treatment and labor law known as EMTALA, which requires hospitals that receive federal funding to stabilize or transfer patients who need emergency treatment.
The Biden administration sued Idaho in 2022, arguing that the state’s strict anti-abortion law violates the law. Idaho bans nearly all abortions and imposes up to five years in prison on doctors who perform abortions unless “necessary to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.”
The government said EMTALA mandates abortion. For pregnant women who need to deal with dangerous but non-fatal health conditions, such as organ failure or loss of fertility.
In August 2022, a district judge sided with the Biden administration, saying Idaho doctors couldn’t be punished for performing abortions to protect patients’ health because of hospitals’ obligations under federal law.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently allowed the state to enforce the law, but then the full bench of the same appeals court again blocked Idaho’s ability to punish emergency physicians while the appeal continues.
In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case at Idaho’s emergency request, allowing the law to go into effect while the litigation continues.
The case is one of two that will determine abortion rights nationwide that the Supreme Court will hear this term, two years after the court overturned abortion rights. eggThe right to abortion was guaranteed by the Constitution.
In early June, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone, saying the anti-abortion doctors who filed the lawsuit did not have standing to sue.
The court is in the final stages of its term, and the EMTALA decision and about eight other decisions have yet to be released.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Dan Diamond and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
