Supreme Court officially allows emergency abortions in Idaho one day after leaked opinion
The Supreme Court on Thursday officially affirmed a lower court injunction that allows abortions in medical emergencies to continue in Idaho, one day after inadvertently posting the opinion online briefly before scrubbing it.
Technically the case will go back to a lower court for further evaluation, but the decision by the high court ensures that Idaho doctors can continue to perform emergency abortions for the time being.
Its decision was per curiam — an unsigned opinion — meaning that the majority opinion was not assigned to a specific judge. However, Alito penned a dissent and was joined in part by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. This is why some describe it as a 6–3 decision.
The move drew criticism from both ends of the ideological spectrum on the Supreme Court, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Samuel Alito wanting the high court to make a decision based on the merits of the case, albeit with those two justices reaching different conclusions.
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 — to allow for a broader exemption when the women’s health is at risk.
“If anything, the need for a clear answer to the Supremacy Clause question has only increased in the intervening months,” Jackson wrote in her partial concurrence, partial dissent. “We have granted certiorari and heard argument. We have had ample opportunity to consider the issues.”
“Despite the clarity of the legal issue and the dire need for an answer from this Court, today six Justices refuse to recognize the rights that EMTALA protect.”
In his dissent, Alito conveyed a similar sentiment about the high court’s decision to effectively punt but called for the court to rule in favor of Idaho.
“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.’”
That opinion drew a rebuke from liberal Justice Elena Kagan, who said Alito’s dissent “requires a brief response.”
“His primary argument is that although EMTALA generally obligates hospitals to provide emergency medical care, it never demands that they offer an abortion—no matter how much that procedure is needed to prevent grave physical harm, or even death,” she wrote.
“That view has no basis in the statute.”
