The Supreme Court has allowed emergency abortions to take place in Idaho, in a short-term victory for the Biden administration.
The Biden administration argues Idaho must perform abortions to protect a woman's health under a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. Idaho's ban includes exceptions for a woman's life, but not her health more broadly.
Back in January, the court granted Idaho's emergency application to review the case. But in a 6-3 decision, the court reversed and sent the case back to lower courts.
The court did not reach the merits of the case, which angered some conservative and liberal justices for different reasons.
In a one-sentence order, the court said its previous decision to grant an expedited appeal was mistaken.
While the court did not share an explanation for the reversal, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a concurring opinion stating that the circumstances of the case had changed. The court's reversal was praised by the White House.
“Doctors should be able to practice medicine. Patients should be able to get the care they need,” President Biden said.
The court's opinion was mistakenly posted a day early, in an echo of the notorious leak of the Dobbs opinion that repealed Roe v. Wade.
Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the court for leaving the issues in the Idaho case unsettled, warning of dangerous consequences for "pregnant people" in the state.
“While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position,” she said. “This court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation, and we have squandered it.”
On the other hand, conservatives criticized the court from a different angle. Samuel Alito, joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, said Biden's "novel" interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act was plainly incorrect, and the court should say so.
Alito pointed out that Biden "instructed members of his administration to find ways" to get around the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs, and the EMTALA was one of them.
"The text of EMTALA shows clearly that it does not require hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law. To the contrary, EMTALA obligates Medicare-funded hospitals to treat, not abort, an 'unborn child.'"
"Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized that the case presents," Alito wrote.
