Supreme Court prematurely posts opinion allowing emergency abortions in Idaho
In an apparent case of premature opinionation, the Supreme Court briefly posted a decision in an Idaho case centered on emergency abortions Wednesday, before quickly scrubbing it from its website.
The 6-3 ruling would have affirmed a lower court injunction that allows abortions in medical emergencies to proceed in the Gem State, according to Bloomberg, which caught the inadvertent filing.
A Supreme Court spokesperson told The Post that an opinion in the combined cases of Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States “has not been released.”
“The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website,” the rep added. “The Court’s opinion in these cases will be issued in due course.”
The case is one of 10 opinions that remain outstanding before the end of the court’s term.
At issue in the Idaho case is the extent to which federal law trumps state law on abortion. The Biden administration argued that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) supersedes Idaho’s abortion ban — which has a carveout for the life of the mother — in emergency situations.
The draft opinion published by Bloomberg shows liberal Justices Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurring with the majority opinion.
Justice Samuel Alito penned a dissent and was joined by fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
In her concurrence, Jackson — the newest justice — argued the court should have ruled more quickly and on the merits of the case, rather than simply affirming the lower court injunction while challenges to the Idaho abortion restrictions proceed.
“This months-long catastrophe was completely unnecessary,” Jackson wrote. “…The court puts off the decision. But how long must pregnant patients wait for an answer?”
Alito conveyed a similar sentiment to Jackson in his dissent, saying the court has a “straightforward question of statutory interpretation before it,” on which it had been “exhaustively” briefed.
“The text of EMTALA shows clearly that it does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law,” he wrote. “To the contrary, EMTALA obligates Medicare-funded hospitals to treat, not abort an ‘unborn child.'”
EMTALA, which was passed in 1986, mandates that emergency rooms that receive Medicare payments provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” for dire conditions.
A lawyer who represented Idaho downplayed any daylight between Idaho’s carveouts and federal policy regarding abortion in medical procedures. But he took issue with the government’s position.
“If ER doctors can perform whatever treatment they determine is appropriate, then doctors can ignore not only state abortion laws, but also state regulations on opioid use and informed consent requirements,” the attorney, Josh Turner, argued back in April.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barret and Chief Justice John Roberts seemed skeptical of Idaho’s arguments, as did all three liberal justices on the bench.
The Supreme Court has faced a fierce backlash from Democrats over its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to an abortion nationwide.
A draft of the opinion in the case that overturned Roe, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, was leaked to Politico in May that year and published weeks before it was officially handed down, in a stunning breach of protocol and precedent.
Earlier this month, the high court spurned a challenge to the widespread availability of mifepristone, part of a two-drug regimen commonly used to induce abortions.
In that ruling, the high court concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing.