The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for emergency abortions to go forward, at least for now, in Idaho. Less than 24 hours after Bloomberg News reported on the brief and accidental release of an opinion on the Supreme Court’s website, the justices officially announced that they had dismissed a pair of cases, Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States, as “improvidently” – that is, mistakenly – granted, without ruling on the merits of the dispute.
Thursday’s unsigned order from the justices leaves in place an order by a federal judge in Idaho that temporarily blocks the state from enforcing its abortion ban, which carves out exceptions only to save the life of the mother and in cases of rape or incest, to the extent that it conflicts with a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. That 1986 law requires emergency rooms in hospitals that receive Medicare to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” to patients who arrive with an “emergency medical condition.”
The court’s order did not indicate why the justices had dismissed the case, but a series of concurring and dissenting opinions provided more insight into the justices’ thinking. Five justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – agreed with the decision to dismiss the case, which will now return to the lower courts. Four justices – Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – would have ruled on the merits of the dispute, although Jackson took a different view of those merits than the other three.
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