US supreme court draft opinion would allow emergency abortions in Idaho – report | US supreme court

The US Supreme Court will reportedly decide to allow medical emergency abortions in Idaho, according to a Bloomberg reportciting a copy of the opinion briefly posted on the Supreme Court’s website Wednesday.

A majority of the justices will reportedly dismiss the case as “unforeseen granted,” meaning the high court should not have heard the case. That dismissal would reinstate a lower court’s order that allowed it Idaho hospitals to perform abortions in cases where a woman’s health may be at risk. Currently, state law allows abortions only when the woman’s “life” is in danger — a much higher threshold.

A dismissal would allow litigation to continue in lower courts, meaning it could theoretically reach the high court again at a later date.

The copy of the opinion obtained by Bloomberg may not be final and is subject to change. in copy posted online by Bloomberg, the justices voted 6-3 to dismiss the case. Justice Elena Kagan wrote an opinion in favor of the dismissal, joined in full by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and in part by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Jackson expressed reservations about the decision to drop the case — although she joined it — because it leaves the door open for the matter to return to court.

“Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. This is a delay,” Jackson wrote in his own opinion, according to a copy published by Bloomberg. “While this court drags on and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing medical emergencies remain in limbo as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”

In a statement, Beth Brinkman, senior director of litigation for American programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights, agreed with Brown.

“We have yet to see a final decision from the court, but if this was to be the final decision, we should not celebrate it as a victory,” Brinkman said. “The language we saw today does not confirm that hospitals are required to treat pregnant people who need emergency abortions. It says nothing either way and puts the problem down the road. The same issue is the subject of a Texas case that could be before the Supreme Court as early as next term.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett also wrote an opinion in favor of the dismissal, joined by Judges Brett Cavanaugh and John Roberts. According to Barrett, oral arguments in the case helped change the justices’ understanding of the case, so much so that she is asking a lower court to rule before the supreme court.

“The opinion in Moyle v. United States, No. 23-726, and Idaho v. United States, No. 23-727, has not been published,” Patricia McCabe, a spokeswoman for the court, said in a statement to the Guardian, referring to the case title for abortion in Idaho. “The Court’s Publications Division inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the court’s website. The opinion of the court on these cases will be issued in due course.”

This appears to be the second such blunder by the court, once a bastion of secrecy, in as many years. A draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v Wade was infamously leaked to Politico in May 2022, about a month before the final decision was issued. The final version of the opinion was largely unchanged from the leaked copy.

Idaho wants abortion to be exempt from the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), which requires hospitals that receive federal dollars to stabilize the health of patients who show up in their emergency rooms with medical emergencies. The The precedent sought by Idaho, critics said, would endanger pregnant women in any state that has abortion restrictions. The Biden administration is suing Idaho to enforce the law.

Emtala is actually Americans’ only universal right to health care. It entered into the crosshairs soon after the supreme court was overruled Rowe. For nearly 50 years, the Roe decision provided a federal right to abortion up to the point where the fetus can survive outside the womb, which usually occurs around the 24th week of pregnancy.

The Emtala Act, signed by abortion opponent Ronald Reagan, sought to specifically protect pregnant women who are actively giving birth. Until its passage, hospitals often transferred or “dumped” women who could not pay when they experienced an emergency to public hospitals, even when they were in advanced stages of labor.

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Emtala has endured a series of attacksincluding by some hospital administrators who view it as “unfunded mandate“. Although the federal government requires hospitals to treat sick patients, it has never provided money to care for poor patients.

Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas opposed dismissing the Emtala case, according to a copy of the draft decision published by Bloomberg. In a fiery dissent, Alito argued that Emtala’s text, as well as the circumstances surrounding its passage in 1986, made clear that “it does not require hospitals to perform abortions.”

The majority’s move to dismiss the case, Alito wrote, was “puzzling.”

“Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to resolve the simple but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents,” wrote Alito, who wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe. “That’s unfortunate.”

If the Supreme Court decides to throw out the Emtala case, it will be the second defeat for abortion opponents this year, as the justices ruled unanimously earlier this month to maintain access to a popular abortion pill. However, the fact that the justices appear to have dismissed both cases on technicalities rather than their merits could leave open the possibility of similar cases brought by anti-abortion activists in the future.

The nation’s highest court, which typically issues all of its opinions by the end of June, still has 11 more opinions to officially release. Decisions are expected on Thursday and Friday.