WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday released an opinion allowing emergency abortions in Idaho but avoiding the larger question of state abortion bans. It’s the final version of an opinion that was inadvertently released on Wednesday.
The 6-3 decision lifts a stay on a previous court’s order to allow abortions in rare but life-threatening circumstances. The Health and Human Services Department sued Idaho in 2022, arguing that the states’ near-total abortion ban clashed with federal laws to provide stabilizing care in emergency situations.
A version of the opinion was briefly inadvertently posted on the Supreme Court’s website and spotted by Bloomberg Law. The decision punts the case between HHS and Idaho back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“[T]o be clear: Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a partially dissenting opinion. “While this Court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissenting opinion, also criticized the panel for not tackling the clash between state and federal law, though he argued that the health department had taken an overly broad interpretation of the emergency care law known as EMTALA. The law requires any Medicare-funded hospital to provide stabilizing care in an emergency. After the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Biden administration insisted that emergency abortions, when necessary, are included in that requirement.
“Today’s decision is puzzling,” Alito wrote. “[T]he Court decides it does not want to tackle this case after all and thus returns the appeal to the Ninth Circuit, which will have to decide the issue that this Court now ducks.”
Justices heard from Biden administration lawyers in April that since Idaho implemented the law, one of the state’s largest hospitals has airlifted at least six pregnant women with serious complications to neighboring states to avoid that scenario, according to court documents.