Thursday's procedural ruling could mean the issue ends up before the conservative-majority court again soon. The ruling came after an opinion was briefly posted on the court’s website accidentally and quickly taken down, but not before it was obtained by Bloomberg News.
The Biden administration – by twisting the decades-old Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) – had argued doctors must be allowed to provide emergency abortions when the woman's health is at serious risk. But Idaho said its law does allow abortions to save the life of a pregnant woman and federal law doesn’t require wider exceptions.
"I think most of the headlines are overblowing what the Court did. Basically, they're saying 'this case came before us too early. We need to let the lower
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Josh Turner, Idaho Chief of Constitutional Litigation and Policy, argued the case before the High Court in April:
“We forced the Biden administration to make major concessions before the Supreme Court that it did not want to make, and those concessions are going to save many unborn lives. The people of Idaho should not be fooled by the misleading headlines in the media. Instead, I encourage everyone to read the court’s opinions for themselves … I have zero doubt after reading the decision, after standing before the justices and answering their questions, and after listening to the DOJ’s best arguments to defend the Biden administration’s legally untenable position, that Idaho’s Defense of Life Act is not preempted by EMTALA and will be vindicated in full.”
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador is similarly optimistic as the case heads back to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals:
“… The court said that Idaho will be able to enforce its law to save lives in the vast majority of circumstances while the case proceeds. The Biden administration’s concession that EMTALA will rarely override Idaho’s law caused the Supreme Court to ask the 9th Circuit for review in light of the federal government’s change in position. Justice Barrett wrote, those concessions mean that Idaho’s Defense of Life Act ‘remains almost entirely intact.’ The 9th Circuit’s decision should be easy.”
John Bursch is Vice President of Appellate Advocacy for Alliance Defending Freedom:
“Both Idaho’s law and [EMTALA] seek to protect the lives of women and their unborn children, and the consistency between those laws makes us confident about the future of this case. The Biden administration can’t manipulate federal law to wipe out state protections for unborn children and force emergency room doctors to perform abortions. Under Idaho’s law, doctors will continue to provide care to women experiencing ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and life-threatening conditions.”
ADF has assisted the state of Idaho in defending its efforts to protect its residents' freedom to preserve life.
But not everyone is pleased by the Supreme Court's decision in Moyle v. United States. Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation, describes the decision as "disastrous."
"While not a decision on the merits of the case, [this decision] eliminates, as least for now, the chance to clarify that states can and should enact their pro-life laws, just as Idaho did with its Defense of Life Act," she says in a statement. "The Biden administration's manipulation of federal law should not go unchallenged."
